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Tonya Papanikolas reportingDet. Dwayne Baird, Salt Lake City Police Dept.: "The danger is way too high. It's like stepping off the edge of a cliff."
Police say vandals drove into the "hot zone" of a power substation Wednesday. They say it was intentional. Whoever it was, took off with spools of copper wire.
It's the fifth break-in at a power substation in the past few weeks. They have all been in Salt Lake County. But, this latest one doesn't seem to mesh
This time, the vandals didn't try to turn off power, and they didn't jump over a fence. Instead, they cut their way in and stole Utah Power property.
After cutting through the outside fence at a Salt Lake power station near 700 S. 4800 West, the suspects drove their car in, cut through a second fence and headed into the hot zone. The hot zone is where power is distributed.
Det. Dwayne Baird, Salt Lake City Police Dept.: "If you're not trained and don't know what you're doing, there's a good chance you'll be electrocuted."
But they weren't. Once inside, the people grabbed a couple spools of copper wire lying on the ground.
"Det. Baird: "It appears as though it was just for the value of what they could take, like they would burglarize any business."
Police say because of that, it doesn't appear this is an act of violence or terrorism. It seems unrelated to the previous four substation break-ins.
In late January, someone broke a lock to get into a Holladay station, cutting power to several thousand customers. A week and a half ago - three break-ins in three nights: First in Taylorsville, then at the Valley Center substation, and finally a few blocks West at the Carlisle substation.
Margaret Oler, Spokesperson, Utah Power: These break-ins that occurred last week inconvenienced more than 11-thousand customers."
While the joint terrorism task force investigates those incidents, Utah Power is hoping a reward up to 10-thousand dollars will prompt someone to come forward.
Margaret Oler, Utah Power: "We're hoping that people may have heard some bits of conversation, may have observed something they may consider suspicious."
Police say this latest break-in could have been a copy-cat act, or just someone seeing an opportunity for theft. But because of where they cut through the fence, going into such a dangerous area - police don't believe it was someone familiar with the substation.
