EDMONDS — The theft of copper wire from Edmonds Stadium that postponed a football game between crosstown rivals Friday night was far more than an inconvenience or an isolated incident.
Similar thefts have occurred at high schools across the country in recent years, from Arkansas to Indiana to California.
Closer to home, copper thefts at Edmonds Stadium will cost $20,000. Just last month, they hit athletic fields at Shorewood High School across the county line from the Edmonds School District. The Shoreline School District made an $11,000 insurance claim in that case, a schools spokesman said.
For the Edmonds district, the darkness meant disappointment for students, families and fans who had to head home when the west bank of lights wouldn’t turn on Friday night. The game between Lynnwood and Meadowdale was made up Saturday afternoon. Maintenance crews also discovered copper wiring had been stolen from softball fields nearby at Edmonds-Woodway High School.
Crews are scheduled to fix the damage Tuesday.
“We are optimistic that the lights will be turned on by Friday night,” Edmonds School District spokeswoman Harmony Weinberg said Monday.
The estimated cost to replace the wiring and fix the damage is $20,000. The case has been reported to the Edmonds Police Department.
The scrap metal industry is worth more than $87 billion yearly in the United States. Thieves follow the market and know the stolen metal can be hard to trace.
In Snohomish County over the years, thieves have stolen church bells, funeral urns, bronze vases from grave sites, catalytic converters from cars, brass fittings for firefighting, sewer grates, manhole covers, copper cable wire used for Internet access, and even a 3,121-pound propeller. Copper wiring also is a popular target at construction sites.
When Everett Memorial Stadium was hit in 2015, it appeared that the thieves broke open a locked gate, possibly drove a vehicle down to the fields and likely used a winch to steal the wiring to the overhead lights. They pulled thousands of dollars worth of copper wire from underground between electric boxes.
“It’s quite often that the cost to repair any damage far exceeds the salvage value of the copper itself,” said Mike Gunn, the Everett district’s executive director of facilities and planning.
The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that metal theft costs U.S. businesses around $1 billion a year.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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