Innisfail RCMP are investigating after a weekend copper wire theft resulted in significant damage to an oil field site.
On July 6, RCMP received a report of a copper wire theft at an oil field site located on Range Road 40 and Township Road 260 West of Spruce View.
Police believe that early that morning, suspect(s) broke into a gate on the property and proceeded to steal a large amount of electrical cable. The theft caused “significant damage” to the site, estimated to be in the $100,000 range police say.
If perpetrators of copper theft are caught, they are typically charged with theft under $5,000, “which is the same as stealing a bicycle,” said Eric Smith, senior vice-president of the Canadian Telecommunications Association.
Smith said these types of crime have much more serious ramifications.
“It impacts critical telecommunications infrastructure that supports emergency services, hospitals, government, financial services and really just people’s day-to-day life,” he said.
“In the U.S., it’s actually considered terrorism, because you’re damaging telecommunications… a little stronger language there, we’d like to see something that sort of matches the ‘life safety’ impact of it,” said Brian Lakey, Reliability Centre of Excellence vice president.
In a call to action, the Canadian Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee noted that January saw a 100 per cent increase in incidents year-over-year with a 49 per cent increase in outage duration.
With files from Steven Wilhelm