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Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

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Re: Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

#131

Post by mynameisnoone »

beAbU wrote: post #80
486sx33 wrote: post #64

Seems like there could be more to the story.. perhaps an alternate explanation than scrap value. a giant steel frame for an antenna would have scrap value, but relatively not that much. For a lot less hassle and more money you could grab a couple semi trailers and cut them up, they are usually just laying around unhooked. Then again I guess meth heads aren’t masters of cost benefit analysis

In south africa we have multiple stories of people destroying massive power transmission systems for the smallest piece of copper pipe or conductor thats exposed on the side of a transformer. Metal theft is almost universally not accompanied by common sense.

South Africa is one the most unequal and dangerous advanced economies where middle class white people almost universally live in fortified compounds. Desperation, unemployment, and crushing poverty is what drives such property crime.

A friend of mine lived in the suburbs of Moscow in 1991. The family was watching TV when suddenly the power went out. It turns out someone stole the power lines to sell for scrap. Infrastructure cannibalism is a sign of civilization on the verge of collapse.

Re: Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

#132

Post by mynameisnoone »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #123
lxgr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrap metal thieves are indeed not always the brightest. I've heard of cases of attempted thefts of (powered) power lines of electrified railways...

20 years ago rotten.com would post pictures of charred thieves that managed to electrocute themselves at the top of a pole.

Death porn and poverty porn are disgusting.

Re: Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

#133

Post by tyingq »

yourapostasy wrote: post #120
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, as I learned from MythBusters, a wire snap will be unable to server a limb or worse. You will still be dead, but your body will be intact. https://mythresults.com/episode62

Container ship dock line snaps on the other hand...

Also Navy aircraft carrier arrestor cables. Like:

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/04/us/around-the-nation-two-...

Re: Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

#134

Post by m463 »

huytersd wrote: post #65
marcosdumay wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal thieves are not known for following strict workplace safety protocols.

Sure, but if you’ve ever been around high tension mental cables before you’ll realize you need a huge pair of balls to cut those. It’s not safety protocols, it’s fear that it might cut you in half.

If you cut a wire under tension at the very limit of its range on one end, can it hurt you?

Re: Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

#135

Post by snypher »

cf100clunk wrote: post #100
imglorp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few guys with plasma cutters and a winch could have that pieced and loaded on a flatbed in no time.

Almost certainly that tower was of galvanized steel, so if the mystery adbuctors had knowledge of welding or metallurgy (no idea if that was the case) they'd know that plasma cutters would be toxic overkill unless they knew how to paint/paste where they cut. Portable chop saws would do just fine. I witnessed pros take down a radio tower by remote-controlled chop saws cutting the guy wires sequentially.

Old timers will say, incorrectly, "just drink some milk"

On a serious note, a short term exposure like this probably wouldn't be that harmful*, and they seem like risk-takers already so the hazards are factored in for them.

Re: Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

#136

Post by snypher »

quickthrowman wrote: post #109
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #13

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…

400 tons is 800k pounds or 10 fully laden semi trailers of material, it’s definitely not anywhere near that much. I bet you could fit the whole thing on one flatbed with room to spare.

It's definitely not that much, as the yard near me pays $0.60 a pound and that tower is not worth $500k.

Re: Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

#138

Post by voakbasda »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #34
azornathogron wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as implausible as it sounds... The guy in Luton whose house was stolen did get it back, but it took two years. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67356...

In this case the squatter was able to legally sell the house in his name: https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/squatter-... >He applied to the courts for permanent possession of the home and won following an appeal, despite the judge accepting that he had committed criminal trespass. According to new reports, Mr Best has now sold the home for a huge profit.

When the courts legalize theft, it is past time for a revolution.

Re: Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

#139

Post by astrange »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #20
InitialLastName wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was hoping this was an actual hog, like the goats you can get to eat your lawn.

Re: Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says

#140

Post by cyberax »

throwway120385 wrote: post #113
cyberax wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you tell anything of the above on a public forum, you'd be immediately canceled and branded a "racist". It's amazing how the current progressive elite is undermining themselves.

Can you name an example of this happening? Because OP's narrative is very common in a lot of "progressive" places in in the media. It's one of the core ideas of progressivism that poverty is a trap and that people need help from the government to escape it. I can think of some other less mainstream news sources that would have a problem with that idea.

> Can you name an example of this happening?

Easy. Ann Hsu, a school board member in SF: https://sfstandard.com/2022/07/19/racially-insensitive-schoo...

Here are her exact words: "Especially in the Black and brown community, I see one of the biggest challenges as being the lack of family support for those students... Unstable family environments caused by housing and food insecurity along with lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning cause children to not be able to focus on or value learning"

> It's one of the core ideas of progressivism that poverty is a trap and that people need help from the government to escape it.

Except that somehow it also adopted a notion that certain groups are forever victims. Black communities are struggling? That's because of white supremacy and systemic racism. So we need to double the struggle against the white supremacy.

Investigating the causes of Black struggles? That's racist.

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