51–60 of 259 posts
I need to check my homeowner's insurance to see if I'm covered if the house is stolen.
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The tweet says "a tower site" which implies they have others. It's entirely possible/likely that they have multiple towers for better coverage; if one went down they would lose some coverage area but not all of it. It's an AM station, so they may also shut down overnight (as many small stations do to avoid over-propagation). Off topic: I could have guessed that guy was a radio station manager without any context. The…
The tweet said that they took a crew with a bush hog ([1]) to "do early cleanup of the property before we do more work down there". So this was almost certainly a long-abandoned radio tower that they acquired and were planning to bring into service. The grass needs to be severely overgrown before you need a bush hog. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brush_hog
1. https://www.al.com/news/2018/07/giant_hogweed_plant_on_alaba...
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'People' is a remarkable way to misspell 'poverty'.
In the broad I agree, but in this specific case, I don't think poor people can dismantle a 200' steel radio tower without anyone noticing. I'm guessing that would require some heavy, expensive equipment.
Meth heads are REALLY stepping up their game.
they can get resourceful that's for sure. A family friend had a catalytic converter stolen in the parking lot of a grocery store when they stopped to pick up a few things. Stealing a catalytic converter involves cutting parts of the exhaust system out of a car.
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A nutcase would have dropped the tower and left it down, not removed the tower itself. They'll find the scrapyard that received it and track it down from there. Unless it was done months ago and they just finally noticed.
Everyone loves a stupid criminal, so it would make sense it would be a local scrapyard. If they were "smart", they would split it up across multiple scrapyards so that it was much less obvious. The fun thing would be to find a new tower that suddenly appeared in another location that happens to look just like this missing one.
Not just someone dropping a tower for scrap.
I'll settle for "inside job to get the FCC to give them a license for whatever".
Wow. My feeling is that metal theft is getting out of control. If the news reporting on it is to be trusted, cases are in fact rising. Thieves have probably always hit junkyards and stolen wire, but now there seems to be more and more infrastructure hit as well. The oddest aspect of this is that scrap steel isn't even worth that much. How many tons could that be? Let's say it's 400 tons, that's maybe $100k. And it se…
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Our local metro area has had a problem with copper thieves for a few years now, cutting open and stealing the wiring from street lights. People are why we can't have nice things, apparently.
when the price of copper went through the roof a few years ago the local drug houses in Dallas started accepting it as payment for drugs. They would then sell the metal to scrap yards at a profit. Once that was up and running any copper left unguarded was gone instantly. Air conditioners were gone, wiring in new construction was gone, wiring in rent houses was gone, any copper anywhere was stolen constantly. I rememb…
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Our local metro area has had a problem with copper thieves for a few years now, cutting open and stealing the wiring from street lights. People are why we can't have nice things, apparently.
'People' is a remarkable way to misspell 'poverty'.
Around here, it's mostly organized gangs doing the stealing, not random poor people... If that were the case, the city wouldn't have a single light fixture left unscathed.
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'People' is a remarkable way to misspell 'poverty'.
Poverty is not itself a reason to commit crime. Some people steal whether they are poor or rich, others don't, whether they are poor or rich. Around here, it's mostly organized gangs doing the stealing, not random poor people... If that were the case, the city wouldn't have a single light fixture left unscathed.
Of course not. It would be absurd to assert otherwise. You always get some scofflaws, but I don't see a reason to assume you get more scofflaws in a weak economy than a strong one. More lawbreakers, yes, but breaking laws for economically rational reasons isn't the same as doing so for its own sake.
I would be curious to know where the people who join such groups come from, and what other prospects they might have had such that difficult, dangerous, and illegal work still ends up looking preferable.
Wow. My feeling is that metal theft is getting out of control. If the news reporting on it is to be trusted, cases are in fact rising. Thieves have probably always hit junkyards and stolen wire, but now there seems to be more and more infrastructure hit as well. The oddest aspect of this is that scrap steel isn't even worth that much. How many tons could that be? Let's say it's 400 tons, that's maybe $100k. And it se…
Our local metro area has had a problem with copper thieves for a few years now, cutting open and stealing the wiring from street lights. People are why we can't have nice things, apparently.
Seems like a lot of work for low money.