KEY POINTS:
An increase in power line thefts in Waikato has an electricity provider worried someone is going to blow themselves up.
WEL Networks general manager of operations Russell Shaw said thefts of copper lines had increased over the past two years from one or two a year to a fortnightly occurrence.
"It's become much more frequent and it's really because of the increase in the scrap value of the materials."
He said the thieves were working around large amounts of electricity and paid scant concern to personal safety.
"They are cutting into live conductors and risking blowing themselves up.
"The last one we had we found burnt rubber gloves at the site.
"We had one about six months ago where they stole copper from a substation and as they cut it out of the ground it caused an arc and it blew the pliers out of their hands and we found the burnt pliers. So this is extremely dangerous.
"That's our principal concern. It's not so much the theft, it's that we might find someone dead at the bottom of a pole."
Mr Shaw said milking sheds on dairy farms had become a popular target. They are only used a couple of times a day leaving long periods for thieves to work undetected.
The farms often have about two or three kilometres worth of copper wire between the sheds and the road . "The financial cost to us is not so much from the scrap value. It's from having to go out and replace these lines. And in some cases it's not us that's having to pay for it," Mr Shaw said.
"In the most recent one we estimated the scrap value to be about $300. The impact it had was the cost of us reconstructing that line. It was more like $15,000. That was a charge that was picked up by the farmer because it was a private line."
WEL Networks owns the lines that run down the road, but in many cases the lines to private buildings belong to the property owner.
`You can imagine going out with a full herd of cattle ready to be milked and finding out that not only do you not have power, you don't have a line there. So I imagine we are getting some fairly upset farmers."
Mr Shaw said WEL was working with police and a private detective to catch thieves and had enjoyed some success already this year.
In addition, security guards were being employed at "high risk" substations, and the company was investing in remote security cameras with motion sensors to snap pictures of anyone going near the lines.
"They are about $2000 - $3000 for each location and we can move them around. If we catch one and save one theft then it more than pays for it."
Not all thefts were pre-planned or in remote locations. Mr Shaw said there were cases of opportunists risking life and limb to seize lines.
"We had an incident in Ngaruawahia where a truck hit a pole and the lines fell down around him. A very helpful passer-by went and cut the lines from around the truck, which was an incredibly dangerous thing to do because they could start up live at 11,000 volts. By the time we got to the site they'd cut them, rolled them up, put them in the back of a ute and driven away."
- NZPA
