Copper thieves risk their own lives and the lives of others.
Flaming hell! The day that Bolton caught fire
Exploding TV sets, kettles in flames, crashing computers. When scenes from science fiction descended on a quiet northern suburb
Kieran Cooke
W hen May Wilkinson, a 65-year-old Bolton housewife, sat with her coffee to watch the 8am news one recent Monday, the first inkling she had that something was wrong was when she heard buzzing and crackling sounds from the plugs low down on the wall.
“Then I saw smoke coming out of the Digibox. You don’t expect your television to go on fire. I called to Albert, my husband, who was in the kitchen. Suddenly the microwave right next to him went up in flames. It frightened him nearly to death.”
The mayhem that hit the Westhoughton area of Bolton was caused by the theft from a nearby electricity substation of small quantities of copper, part of switching gear that regulates power output. Usually, 230 volts of power flows into household sockets but take away the copper regulator and up to 400 volts can suddenly charge down the line, with dire consequences.
Within minutes alarms up and down the Wilkinsons’ road were going off. Householders, many still in their dressing gowns, crowded into the street. There was talk of exploding televisions, fuse boxes falling off walls, washing machines going haywire, boilers dying, computers crashing. An elderly woman was stuck upstairs after her stairlift stopped working.
“There were four or five fire engines outside,” says May Wilkinson. “We spent hours waiting on the street and the whole day and most of that night without electricity as everything was checked.”
Police say that there’s a correlation between rising copper prices on the world market, driven in particular by demand from China, and the incidence of copper thefts from electricity substations and elsewhere. But the ebbs and flows of the metals markets are of little immediate concern to the Wilkinsons and more than 100 other householders in Bolton. Instead they question electricity supply security measures and wonder about who is going to pay for all their damaged household equipment.
Paul Fletcher lives in a street close to the Wilkinsons. “The first thing I noticed was the lights came on extra bright and then they all blew. After that bang followed bang as computers, the TV and the sound system all went. I drove round the streets, hammering on doors to wake people up in case of fires. I calculate that I’ve more than £4,000 equipment that’s gone.”
United Utilities, the UK’s largest listed water company, is the electricity supplier in the Bolton area. Fletcher says the company has told him it is not obliged to pay for damages and asked him to contact his insurers.
“The insurance people say they won’t pay anything because the damage was caused by vandalism — so where do I go from here? Surely someone must be responsible for security at the substations. You just go round and round in circles.”
With police saying that there has been a notable rise in copper thefts in recent weeks, householders around the country could well find themselves facing dilemmas similar to the residents of Bolton. Questions about who is responsible for what in the electricity business are complicated by the industry’s structure, with various utility groups sub-contracting work to other companies, that often subsequently outsource particular functions to other entities.
etc...
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life ... 147819.ece
Still, looking on the bright side, as more thieves get fried, it reduces the amount of stupidity in the human gene pool! 
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1681
Other fried thieves have been logged in 'Dumbest Criminals' recently:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 073#972073
