Is sub-station vandalism done by experts?

The method of stealing copper bus bars from an electric substation serving Walker Street, points to the possibility that it might have been done by experts.

This is according to resident Richard White.

White’s domestic worker contacted him last Tuesday (20 May) round 11am to let him know that the earth leakage kept tripping. When White arrived home in the afternoon he used his testing instruments to test the current and found that the supply was running at 370 volts instead of the 220 volts that is suppose to run through residencies. He immediately isolated his house’s power and advised his neighbours to do the same.

On investigation he found that the substation that services his street has been vandalised and the copper bus bars has been stolen. (Bus bars is a strip or bar of copper, brass or aluminium that conducts electricity within a switchboard, distribution board, substation, battery bank or other electrical apparatus.)

What White finds highly suspicious is the fact that the theft was done very neatly, with no locks broken open and the stolen parts were removed as if by someone who knows the inner workings of an electrical substation.

“The fact that it was done during broad daylight and so expertly makes me suspect that it might have been a City Power contractor,” says White.

White also says that several of his neighbours and himself suffered damages to electrical appliances due to the high current that ran through their homes.

It has been reported previously that either contractors or suspects posing as contractors would steal copper in broad daylight because the public just assumes that they are busy with official maintenance business.

Councillor for the area, Marianne Kemp visited the substation on behest of the residents and said that she was not aware of the problem.