Only $20 worth of cables was stolen from underground lines, but Telus is out $50,000 to restore the wires and the lost service time.
At 5 a.m. on Sunday, May 19, alarms went off alerting the Telus network of an outage in the Victory Heights area in New West, which affected 102 customers, according to Telus spokesperson Shawn Hall.
Technicians were dispatched to the site at East Columbia Street and Holmes Street. A manhole cover had been popped off and when technicians went down below, they found three cables had about two metres cut from each one, according to Hall.
"We had to replace the entire lengths between two manhole covers to restore service," Hall said. "It was a big job."
Customers had no service for 34 hours. "Our real concern is that this left our customers without access to 911 for a better part of a day-and-a-half," Hall said. "Let alone the inconvenience of not having home service."
Hall estimates the thieves took $20 worth of cable line, but in the end it cost Telus $50,000 to replace.
"Obviously it was not worth it for the thieves to put our customers' lives at risk," he said.
Hall said Telus is actively working with the New Westminster Police Department to track down the thieves. He is also asking anyone with information to contact the police at 604-525-5411.
Metal theft was a serious problem before provincial legislation came in to help deter it, according to Hall. About 250 metal thefts were reported in the first half of 2012, and most of the thefts happened from aerial cables and not underground.
Hall said it is very unusual to have ground cable stolen.
"The new legislation introduced makes it very difficult for thieves to sell to scrap dealers," he said. "We went from having more than one (theft) a day to a handful a month."
Hall said this year, as of the end of April, there had been 17 incidents.
"We're seeing far less of this than we used to thanks to the provincial legislation and combined with police enforcement and public awareness," he added. "But one is too many."
The new legislation requires scrap dealers to record details about the items they purchase.
