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SANDY — Rocky Mountain Power asked for the public's help reporting suspicious activity around its electrical substations Thursday after the company says someone vandalized three stations and stole copper wire from two of them.
It's not the kind of incident you hear of often in Utah, though Jona Whitesides, communications specialist at Rocky Mountain Power, says it has happened.
"The whole purpose is just anywhere they can find copper wire is to steal it and resell it," Whitesides said.
He said the initial report showed just one of the substations in Sandy impacted. A crew responded and found the fence cut and copper ground wire missing.
They routed it to a new circuit while they fixed the problem. The response cut power to about 3,500 homes for no longer than half an hour.
But Whitesides said they take any incident at an electrical substation seriously.
"Anytime we hear that there's a problem in a substation, that's why we dispatch somebody quickly to kind of assess that situation to really know what is it that we're dealing with," he said.
Across the country there have been at least 70 incidents of vandalism, sabotage or physical attacks at electrical facilities this year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Just last week a shooting at electrical stations in North Carolina cut power to thousands for days.
"I don't want to say fortunately, but in a sense, this was all about theft rather than some other thing we've seen in the nation in some of the other utilities," Whitesides said.
He also noted that electrical equipment at Rocky Mountain Power substations is surrounded by fencing for a reason.
"Not only does that put a potential thief at the risk of electrocution to where they could possibly die," he said. "It's actually to make sure people who are not properly trained don't come in contact with the equipment."
After responding to the initial incident, Rocky Mountain crews inspected other nearby substations and found two more that had fences that were damaged and one with more copper wire missing.
Whitesides said Rocky Mountain Power will look at whether it needs to take action to better secure the substations.
