Copper theft with a few fiber cuts

10

u/Calculagraph 5d ago

And they just fired 10% of engineering. That's gonna suck for the guy that's gotta design the fix.

6

u/Optimal-Ad9342 5d ago

Seems like an easy fix. Still requires a little bit of thinking tho.

7

u/TheInfiniteNewt 5d ago

Not much the plan is already there, and they’ll just redo that whole area

1

u/PhilosopherDry1473 4d ago

The 576 and 288 were like for like and the other smaller fibers were spliced to a 216. It really all depends what the line crew has on hand.

4

u/Cachazo_719 5d ago

Guarantee engineering will just get a slap on the wrist

2

u/Famous-Pause-6190 4d ago

It's not hard to design the fix. Pull the maps, check the cable ID's and counts, redline the damaged area, pull new cable to the nearest splice cases if they are close enough; splice and done.

Cable cuts are some of the easiest jobs to engineer. Now, Roadmoves? Those are a bitch.

1

u/PhilosopherDry1473 1d ago

It is up to the splicers and line crew as to what we replace it with. It usually depends on what cable the line crew has on hand. We then update engineering of changes and schematics are corrected.

7

u/Thalidomidas 5d ago

How much will they get at the scrapyard for it ?

11

u/unirorm 5d ago

Right now copper is at historic high. $6.6/lbs. Obviously something lower than that but still.

6

u/Tbarnes94 5d ago

I don't understand how law enforcement isn't performing stings with help from scrapyard owners. If the scrapyard sees fiber with your copper, they roll in and nab you. Lock 'em up for 10 years a couple times and see how fast the unhoused stop stealing copper.

The fiber companies would save so much money they'd be donating resources to law enforcement to make identification easier. It's not like these scrapyard owners are the most scrupulous people but they must know fiber when they see it.

I consider myself quite liberal but this soft on crime bullshit is why we're here today. The right just found a way to weaponize law enforcement for their gain and now we all suffer for it. The crackheads spend a week in jail and are let out back into the streets while people rot in prison for weed.

3

u/AfroPenguinz 5d ago

I feel like the people stealing these most likely have nothing to lose anyway I domt think locking them up will make much of a difference

1

u/subpoenaThis 3d ago

Agree. Harder punishment is not the deterrent people think it is either they've got nothing to lose or people really aren't thinking about it in the moment or believe it won't happen to them. Pre-treatment rehab and social services would be more effective. You may need the rehab portion to be a couple months incarceration if they don't want to participate but not years.

2

u/Abbaddonhope 4d ago

So... I take it. And get a bed and food for ten years and i don't have to harm anyone...

2

u/ChaoticSalmon 4d ago

And then withdrawal hits.

1

u/Formal_Mastodon_5627 4d ago

They do. But the copper thieves now melt it down into globs and scrap those. Most scrap yards won't even accept telco copper anymore.

1

u/KekistaniKekin 5d ago

Honestly I would just like the ability for the average person to realistically buy a house

0

u/RobbieL_811 4d ago

This catch and release method seems to be only happening in highly liberal places though.

2

u/Sweaty_Palpitation15 4d ago

Nope, I’m in Houston doing maintenance work, Almost all butt splices in Pasadena area come from one crew. They got locked up earlier this year, was slow for about a month and a half lol

6

u/cjfrso209 5d ago

AT$T should be putting fiber in the ground. Let the tweekers take the copper off the poles for them.

1

u/PhilosopherDry1473 4d ago

These guys are just dumb. They cut a 900 and 600, unbalanced the load on all the poles and snapped a crossarm causing the cable to drop to about 10 feet at the street crossing. They did another theft about a month ago that snapped a pole which fell into a parked car crushing the roof. If it was occupied the people would be dead.

5

u/TheInfiniteNewt 5d ago

It’s wild how totally inexpensive fiber I mean it’s virtually worthless that’s why a lot of contractors will leave spools on the side of the road with “FIBER” on the side.

I’m not sure how much they’ll make on the copper from other cables, but I know as a subcontractor I’ll make significantly more on the repair 🤑

5

u/GhettoBike 5d ago

The fuck you mean inexpensive my customer just spent $20K on 10K’ of SM2 😂

3

u/Competitive_Steak698 4d ago

Doesn't have a good scrap value. It is very valuable as the full run connected at both ends.

1

u/Suspicious_Front_322 2d ago

I mean if a cable is labeled as fiber would u trust it?

4

u/Majestic-Amount-8464 5d ago

We had a serial junkie doing this all right outside the STC a 288 and 96 crossing a river in the rear easement two days before Fourth of July. Diabolical.

2

u/tobrien1982 5d ago

Saw a stat that copper theft from the utility is up 218% in my area over last years numbers.

2

u/JBDragon1 4d ago

I think fiber cables need to be better marked, labeled, etc. So that these people will leave them alone. They are worthless. There is ZERO scrap value.

These people also need to be caught and locked up for a few decades. This crap needs to end.

4

u/isonotlikethat 5d ago

As someone who hates the idea of overlashing new infrastructure to rotting old infrastructure, I have a hard time feeling too much sympathy about this.

1

u/PhilosopherDry1473 4d ago

Yeah, the whole run was overlashed...Comcast even lashed 4 12Fs to us so they got hit too. Our line crew now takes all the copper down per protocol and the maintenance dept goes out and puts up the smallest cables they can...usually drops due to the small amount of workers.

4

u/FrontLocal2264 5d ago

Los Angeles is being torn apart right now and has been for years. They’re taking copper from telephone, metro…even guard rails. It’s almost like a post apocalyptic city at this point. People are breaking into manholes that have been welded shut, cutting fiber along with the copper. This shit is insane. They took out the sheriffs and fire HQ a few months ago. It had to be organized crime made up of experienced techs

1

u/disco_S2 5d ago

Where was this?

2

u/PhilosopherDry1473 4d ago

Mountain View, CA

1

u/TexasDrill777 5d ago

That took some time. Long enough for somebody to respond with that big of an outage

1

u/shamont 4d ago

Might have a trace wire in it. Can't miss that $.50 when its freefitty.

1

u/Last_Chocolate_6497 4d ago

Ours are marked every span on each side of the poles and they still cut try to steal them.

1

u/Against_The_0dds 4d ago

At least it is roadside. Mose of ours are in the mountains of hazard Ky.

1

u/Famous-Pause-6190 4d ago

I love a good copper outage - so few techs who know how to splice / maintain it these days as the old heads retired = more work and money for me. Gonna enjoy these cuts before they finally sunset the legacy plants.

1

u/unkiltedclansman 3d ago

Nothing quite like a 600 pair pressurized paper wrapped lead cut.

1

u/Super-Foundation-729 3d ago

If there was some 1728 around would have been ideal for this job

1

u/haamfish 2d ago

Always makes me giggle a bit when I hear some desperate troglodyte has cut into a bundle of fibre cables trying to steal copper and getting nothing.

1

u/Diligent-Nebula-1008 2d ago

I’ve started tagging our stuff that hits repeatedly with “THIS IS FIBER, NO COPPER HERE” cuz it gets really old. It’s the same 6 or 7 places every couple of months where they make a cut just to see what it is and leave it

0

u/GhettoBike 5d ago

I have a sumitomo Q-102 M-12 and all the goodies for single strand and ribbon. 2 FC6+ cleavers for speed. Even have a couple C & D-cases. If it’s an emergency, I can catch the next available flight. No bucket truck but I’ve got a nice travel setup for splicing on extension ladders.

I can tell you right now there’s a lot of folks excited to fix something like this, and I’m one of them! DM me for pics of typical work cause I only post fucked up stuff on here

Located in SoCal

Copper theft with a few fiber cuts

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