EVERETT — Copper thieves are to blame for an outage that knocked out power to 8,400 Snohomish County PUD customers in Everett on Thursday morning.
It was the sixth such theft this year. Last year, there were 31, PUD spokesman Bob Bolerjack said.
In 2014, the PUD spent about $120,000 fixing the damage left by copper thieves.
The year before, the utility saw damage of more than $117,000, while the value of the actual metal was less than $1,000.
“This has been a growing phenomenon since copper prices went up,” Bolerjack said.
Snohomish County mirrors much of the rest of the country when it comes to scrap metal theft. Substations are just one of many targets. Last month, it was a Silver Lake dental office that was forced to close for several days when thieves stole the copper pipes beneath the building. In February, thieves broke into Everett Memorial Stadium and pulled roughly $11,000 worth of copper wire from underground. The wire was part of the stadium’s outdoor lighting system.
Over the years, crooks have stolen church bells, funeral urns, bronze vases from grave sites, catalytic converters from cars, brass fittings for firefighting, sewer grates, manhole covers and even a 3,121-pound propeller.
Thieves follow the market and know the metal can be hard to trace. Copper often tops the priority list of metal thieves.
Yet the return isn’t all that lucrative.
The PUD estimates Thursday’s theft netted less than $200 of copper wire, Bolerjack said.
Crews at the PUD’s energy control center noticed a voltage fluctuation at the Glenwood substation around 6:15 a.m. They took the substation down and restarted power a half hour later.
The theft was within the chain-link fenced yard where live high-voltage wires pose the risk of electrocution.
“The reward they get is minimal,” Bolerjack said. “The risk they take is gigantic.”
These days, the PUD is working to retrofit its 88 substations with a steel mesh that’s harder to cut through as well as surveillance cameras. So far, 18 substations have been given the security upgrades, but it’s going to be a multi-year process, Bolerjack said.
The PUD also is starting to use a copper weld wire, which is basically steel wire wrapped around copper. That makes it of no value to a metal recycler since the copper cannot be separated from the steel.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com
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