In my area the local meth monsters target of choice seems to be irrigation wells. They seem to be lured by the sweet siren song of 600-800 ft of beautiful 8 ga copper. Some must not be too electrically savvy as occasionally they find their fried carcass near the wellhead .
they arent adverse to just taking diesel drive engines either as occasionally 1500 lb stationary engines dissapear our crackheads if nothing else are industrious! 
They convert them to generators to power grow houses here. Pacific Gas and Electric had a helluva of time with growers stealing large solar panels they use on gas line stations used in the boonies for remote monitoring over the years for the same reason.
I remember a spike in copper prices back in the late 70's that had guys stealing miles of decades old insulated telegraph wire running along the right of ways of railroads out in the country. They'd sneak in at night and work in the dark. One problem, when electricity first came to the region, the power companies rented space on the telegraph poles to reach small communities along the line instead of putting up their own poles, it was cheaper to do it that way.
After a few decades most switched to their own poles as they secured right of ways, but in tight areas, such where the railroad ran along a bluff near the rivers, they still shared poles. If you were stealing wire in or around those sections you had to be very careful. It's tough to tell an electric line that might serve 30 or 40 houses from an old telegraph line in the dark. If they got crossed, which happened all the time, and the insulation had rubbed through, it was big trouble, too.
More than a few guys met their maker trying to steal wire that way. A guy I went through school with has been known as "Stump" since his nighttime encounter with a live line back in '79. He worked for guy who installed lines for the power company. He was the "expert" of that wire stealing crew. He scoped the telegraph line runs out when they were running the new wire on his day job. They stole tens of miles of that stuff for months before that faithful night. He was damned lucky the ladder flew out from under him when that jolt hit him causing him to convulse and plummet to the ground. That bunch were stealing it to be able to afford to inject their favorite drug, PCP. Bright boys.
Ol' Stump was as wild as they come and had been since he was little. When I was a safety patrol, I had post furthest from the school. My only job was to make sure the future Stump got from the corner to school, that was it. He would come rolling over to my spot from his Grandad's tavern about a half hour late, smoking his first cigarette of the day, and drinking a cup of coffee. What was going to tell him? His folks let him smoke at home and he bought them from the machine at Grandpa's place. The future Stump was 9 at the time. He and Keith Richards have to be related.
Topic: K263AP is missing its tower (Read 1733 times)
