Copper thieves hit condo project *NJ

Status
Not open for further replies.
celtic

celtic

Senior Member
Location
NJ
Copper thieves hit condo project


Saturday, January 26, 2008

HOBOKEN - Some very meticulous thieves stripped copper out of wiring worth $18,450 installed throughout two floors of a condominium under construction, police said yesterday.
Sometime between 6 p.m. Wednesday and 8 a.m. Thursday, the culprits sliced the sheathing on more than 2,000 feet of cable and pulled out the interior copper, police said. The wiring was taken from the second and third floors of a condo building under construction on the 1100 block of Hudson Street, police said.
The going rate for clean scrap copper is between $2.55 and $2.65 a pound, according to an employee at A&A Scrap Metals, Inc., of Astoria, Queens.
The number of pounds of copper that can be retrieved from wire can vary greatly, depending on the width. Police did not know how wide the wires were.
Click to expand...



I can honestly say, I have never heard of this level of thievery around here.
 
That is sad. We have had a problem with that here in Louisiana. They have been going into houses under construction and taking the wire and the copper water lines. Also have heard that in Houston they are stealing the coils out of the AC units. That is just dumb that they would do something like that.
 
Takes recycling to a whole new level !! But seriously, I had read about incidents like this before. I guess it is correlated with the commodity price of copper. Very disturbing...
 
Incidents lie this do happen all the time, in the case the location is disturbing.
Hudson Street is a pretty "active" street in Hoboken. Hoboken itself is a pretty "active" town...at appx. 1.2 sq. miles with 50K +/- residents(mostly yuppies) - it's a pretty tight fit.

It was a pretty brazen theft....but considering Hoboken has been re-building since the mid-80's, no one(average yuppie) could probably tell the difference between "install" and "removal"...although the city has work ordinances limiting "work" between 7AM and 10PM....and the location was literally around the corner from the police station.
Crazy.
 
I wonder who will be responsible for it.

Can a clause be added to your contract protecting the EC from responsibility for stolen material onsite?
 
This sounds like an inside job to me. It sounded like feeders they pulled out. You would have to know a thing or two about where the panels, gear and pull points are to pull this stuff out efficiently and quickly. Maybe I'm overestimating the average copper thief but this sounds fishy to me.
 
tmbrk said:
I wonder who will be responsible for it.

Can a clause be added to your contract protecting the EC from responsibility for stolen material onsite?
Click to expand...
We get a builders risk policy when we do large jobs,I have never seen a GC take responsibility for subs material on the job it was in the contract for the Bannana store that we have to secure the light fixtures supplied by corporate .
 
Rewire said:
We get a builders risk policy when we do large jobs,I have never seen a GC take responsibility for subs material on the job it was in the contract for the Bannana store that we have to secure the light fixtures supplied by corporate .
Click to expand...
Yes, it is always pushed down to the sub.
 
National problem!

National problem!

macmikeman said:
That type of career needs no social security number in order to get hired. Just food for private thought not discussion.
Click to expand...
This has become a major national problem! And we all know the reason for this problem, but we can't talk "politics" here. As I said in another post about copper theft...."We have become just like a third world country"!!
 
ItsHot said:
but we can't talk "politics" here
Click to expand...

No, we can't

And it is for reasons like this...:)


ItsHot said:
This has become a major national problem! And we all know the reason for this problem, .
Click to expand...

No, we don't all know the reason, you may believe you know the reason (heck maybe you do) but I guarantee there are others that will not agree that you know the reason. :)
 
In Illinois once material has been installed, the material becomes the property of the building. So in this case, the wire had been installed so the cost to replace would befall the property owner.

If the wire was spooled up sitting on the ground than the EC would have to replace it.

I recently bid on a job that required the EC to receive and safely store material supplied by the Owner. Who determines the definition of 'safely' ? The same clause required the EC to return all unused material to the Owner. I excluded that clause.
 
celtic said:
I can honestly say, I have never heard of this level of thievery around here.
Click to expand...
This happened not too long ago in Riverdale, NJ. The EC laid in his feeder cables on a friday and by monday the copper was gone. Too bad he didn't power up after he laid it in (not that I want to see anyone get toasted). Many of the scrap yards around here are alerted that when someone comes in with large amounts of larger size copper wire they notify the authorities.
 
I cashed in $9800 worth of bare bright last month and they didn't say a word to me, just cut the check. I do all my junking with one guy, so that probably helped matters.
 
peter d said:
This sounds like an inside job to me. It sounded like feeders they pulled out. You would have to know a thing or two about where the panels, gear and pull points are to pull this stuff out efficiently and quickly. Maybe I'm overestimating the average copper thief but this sounds fishy to me.
Click to expand...

Electricians can become crack heads too!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top