A dangerous criminal act last week that left more than 6,800 customers of Frontier without telephone and Internet service should be viewed as a renewed call to action against the growing copper theft epidemic.
Frontier crews found the damaged cable in a remote area west of Maybeury in McDowell County. The location of the cable theft presented an enhanced threat to public safety due to the fact that many customers who lost their telephone land-line service live in an area that currently lacks cell phone service.
Had there been an actual emergency during the outage period, the impacted families would have had no way of calling 911, or the local police, fire or rescue squad. You have to wonder if the individual, or individuals, responsible for this shameless act bothered taking into consideration the full impact of their actions upon the community, or in this case, 6,800 customers of Frontier.
Zach Tomblin, general manager for Frontier’s southern West Virginia division serving Logan and McDowell counties, said such copper thefts are becoming a “daily occurrence” for the company. He reports the company has had as many as 11 copper thefts within a single day.
Unbelievable. Considering not only the threat to public safety, but also the danger to the copper thieves themselves, it is hard to imagine why anyone would be compelled to commit such a foolish act. Those thieves who are continuing to perpetuate this outrageous scourge of criminal activity in rural southern West Virginia are not only committing a felony, they are also playing with fire. We have repeatedly seen the headlines of individuals who have been killed — in many instances fatally electrocuted — while trying to steal copper.
While there are financial repercussions to Frontier each time copper is stolen from a phone line, the main focus must first be the safety and security of customers, and the restoration of their services, according to Tomblin.
As a result, the search for suspects must take a back seat to a restoration of services. However, an active investigation into last week’s large-scale outage continues.
This criminal act should be seen as a call to action for area lawmakers, community leaders and law enforcement officials.
We must multiply our enforcement and educational efforts as it relates to copper thefts, and we must seek even tougher penalties against those convicted of stealing copper, if we are to avoid a repeat of what happened last week in McDowell County.
Columns
August 23, 2011
‘Daily occurrence’ — Copper thefts threaten public safety
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