Thanks to Saben for the photo and report:
Someone has cut the grounding wires to some power poles in Alki along 60th Ave SW. Not sure of how widespread the problem may or may not be, but the three closest to my house were all cut. You can see by the pic that they also bent/cut the metal guard protecting the wire so this was intentional and thought the community should be aware.
You can report vandalism to Seattle City Light at 206-684-3000.
No clue if this is related.We had a very strange occurrence involving a cable near our home. A couple of weeks a go, on a Saturday, our internet went out. Checked all our internals. Nada. Had to wait 5 days for a technician to come take a look. Turns out the wire to our home had been cut – obviously cut. But the cut was done not near our house, nor near the utility pole at the street but another 10 feet down – between utility poles. WTH? Wire was coiled on the ground next to the other util. pole. No tree limbs nearby – so not someone accidentally clipping & this was the only cut cable. Nothing to lean a long ladder against. a lift? Just a total mystery to us. This is upper Gatewood, off California.
This happened to us as well in Alki area about two weeks ago on Wednesday night. Ours was cut directly attached to our house in a middle row townhome which requires jumping fences to get to.
YMA, down at my work in Georgetown we had just had cameras installed on the outside of the Bldg. We came into work the next day and we had no Electricity at all. Luckily our Camera’s have a 15 min of Battery Pk. that it still records on. A Company that we deal with had come close to our bldg. with their truck had pulled down the main electrical wiring to our bldg since they were so close. He gets out coils up the torn down wire then high-tails it out of there. The next day he shows up to deliver the load. Our guy even tells him how we have no electricity but we can unload him. He says nothing. Since we had it all on our Cameras that it was him our Boss Calls his Company and they had to pay for all the Electrical Manintenance that we had to have done. Ck. with the neighbors down by the pole to see if they have cameras?
Did you make a police report? This is vandalism at minimum. Please be sure….. Any and all of us…. that you report this type of thing to the police and also to the Department Head of Seattle, City light(google will have that person’s name and contact information) obviously it needs to be stopped!
Saben, This has been occurring for years. Grounding wires were cut down our alley, I called and reported it to Seattle Light, they took my report over the phone. That was 5-6 years ago, nothing was ever done to rectify that I was made aware of.
Nothing got done because you reported it to someone who is a phone call take her and not in a position of responsibility. Get it in email to Mayor Harrell AND the head of Seattle, City light. Specifically ask for a reply.. follow up and stay on top of it and you will get it taken care of because you’re at a higher level of responsibility within the city.
We also had the ground wires stolen from all the poles in our alley between Charlestown and Andover recently – turned it into find it fix it and received no reply
Bury our wires already…can we be a modern city? It’s insane they aren’t
The investment would more than double your electricity bill and the digging up of every street, sidewalk and private property would drive everyone mad with frustration. While here, all copper theft can be traced to criminals/drug addiction and it’s obvious at every encampment given the evidence.
Probably cost $3-4K to UG the home service maybe more and your utility rates would go up 3-4 times with a whole area UG program. All sounds positive but the public will foot the bill. Good idea if people are willing to pay for it.
Total infrastructure underground in residential neighborhoods, in places with “favorable terrain” was something like $15-20k per house estimated a decade ago. If you have priced out any trade work since then, it’s safe to assume more than that now
Wow! I knew I was off a bit but I guess I was underbidding the effort! Good point! Been thinking about this a lot. UG is expensive and I am not sure all are really to foot the cost. However the cost to continually provide maintenance needs to be included in the overall package.
That’s a severe under-estimation of the reality of undergrounding our utilities. When I left PSE in 2016 it was a million a mile, give or take – to underground. Homeowners can only underground the power to their house
Is any of this copper wire being stolen to sell for drug money? Or, is this strictly vandalism?
Why assume drug money? Why go straight to that every single damn time when it comes to impoverished people? So annoying
Jaxon- why do you assume it was impoverished individuals ? It could’ve been your next door neighbor or a white collar professional needing extra money for a home remodel.
Jason. Clearly you have documentation on who, and why wire is being stolen. Share please. I’m betting I’m right.
Not really vandalism, just the theft of $.10 in copper that costs a few thousand times that to replace.
It’s far more than $0.10, that’s not stereo wire.We had every pole in our alleyway hit like that a few years ago. It’s incredibly dangerous to all the homes and anyone walking near the poles.
Can you explain how this is dangerous? Excepting the rare case of a pole being struck by lightning while someone stands next to it? Or is it corrosion protection?
Prevents fires and electric shock when there’s a surge in the system. Lightning is a concern, but not the primary concern.
Kind of hilarious wire theft is news to some people. Every cyclist who leaves West Seattle via the path from Delridge to the low bridge has probably seen sketchy dudes stripping wire or steered around the piles of insulation. Even more so if you turn south to W Marginal before the bridge. And why there, you may ask? Surely West Seattle Recycling would not buy odd bits of copper carried in by sketchy dudes?
Bingo. Recyclers need to be regulated more. People don’t steal to just hoard copper wire & catalytic converters. Somebody’s paying out for this stuff. I saw an entire 40’ trailer being filled with old bikes on W Marginal in a vacant lot. No, it wasn’t Bike Works.
As I understand it City Light cut the ground wire on most poles years ago. It turns out that a lot of the current on the neutral line was going into the grounding rod at people’s houses and traveling through the galvanized water lines, then going through the ground to the ground wire on the pole. This was causing a lot of corrosion of the water pipes. City light realized that since each power pole feeds 3 to 5 houses and that at each house the neutral wire is directly connected to a ground rod at the meter as it enters the house. It turned out that the ground rod at the pole was not needed so City Light cut most of them to stop the water pipe corrosion problem.
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