[HN Gopher] Someone stole a Jasper radio station's 200-foot towe...
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Someone stole a Jasper radio station's 200-foot tower, owner says
Author : HiroProtagonist
Score : 98 points
Date : 2024-02-08 14:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.al.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.al.com)
| delichon wrote:
| I need to check my homeowner's insurance to see if I'm covered if
| the house is stolen.
| rssoconnor wrote:
| Ah. "The Problem of the Missing Baseball"
| soco wrote:
| Note to self: don't build a steel house.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Just pour concrete over it.
| azornathogron wrote:
| 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...
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You should also check if the coverage depends on who does the
| stealing. Like, if your house is stolen into the spirit world
| like in Poltergeist. Clearly, this wasn't an act of God.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| meth addicts
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Or an insurance scam by the owner?
| justusthane wrote:
| According to the article it was not insured.
| jibbit wrote:
| not in the US, but i believe we have plastic manhole covers here
| now because you can't leave anything metal unguarded
| euroderf wrote:
| Aren't those going to be light enough that people will steal
| them just for the hell of it ?
| mikrl wrote:
| Blessed are the scrappers, for they shall inherit... 200' tall
| radio towers?
| dgrin91 wrote:
| How come they didn't notice that their service went dead when the
| tower was stolen?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| 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. There's just a look to them.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| 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
| randomdata wrote:
| _> The grass needs to be severely overgrown before you need
| a bush hog._
|
| Use of a bush hug does not imply the need for a bush hog,
| though. Even for routine maintenance of the grass you're
| apt to choose the bush hog out of convenience and
| practicality. It's not like you're going to waste time
| puttering around with the push mower you cut your grass at
| home with for a tower site out in the middle of nowhere.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| A single season of no maintenance in rural Alabama could
| easily allow the property to be full of Giant Hogweed[1]
| which seems to allow UV light to penetrate our skin a lot
| more easily, causing severe burns. Especially around a
| tower where birds roost and spread droppings for 100 feet
| around the area.
|
| 1. https://www.al.com/news/2018/07/giant_hogweed_plant_on_a
| laba...
| nosrepa wrote:
| I used to mow the grass at an active radio station. I
| occasionally had to DR a path to each tower so they could
| do maintenance. They don't regularly mow the fields where
| the towers are, though Toro did occasionally come out and
| mow the whole thing as a test site for new mowers, which
| was neat.
| roamerz wrote:
| >There's just a look to them.
|
| Yup I've got a face for radio as well.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| based on the description this was an unattended repeater
| hn72774 wrote:
| It's covered in the article...
| nickcotter wrote:
| Note that the tower doesn't really look like that picture in the
| nypost - it's a much more portable looking affair:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y9QMBDPnazGT1cgj9
| imglorp wrote:
| A few guys with plasma cutters and a winch could have that
| pieced and loaded on a flatbed in no time.
| huytersd wrote:
| Not easily. Those metal tension cables are dangerous to cut
| and it's going to have to fall like a tree in some direction.
| alistairSH wrote:
| These towers often have several sets of tension cables at
| various heights, so you could cut the outermost/tallest
| set, drop the top-third of the tower, and work your way
| down. Still dangerous, but it's not always "bring all 500'
| down at once".
| cf100clunk wrote:
| There are YouTube video compilations showing exactly what
| you've described.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Metal thieves are not known for following strict workplace
| safety protocols.
| huytersd wrote:
| 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.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| 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
| depingus wrote:
| Why even cut the cables? Wouldn't they just back out the
| tensors at the anchors and do it all under control?
| asadotzler wrote:
| My tower has 8 guy wires and each is easily released from
| the ground with hand tools.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| 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.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Steel scraps at $225 a ton..
|
| That's about what a large pickup truck can haul.
|
| Copper is worth 20x more.
|
| I dunno, if you're willing to work that hard you could probably
| just become a contractor.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think the issue is that some people are willing to work quite
| hard, but only intermittently. (Though that doesn't necessarily
| disqualify them from being a contractor either, I suppose.)
| randomdata wrote:
| Most people don't fear hard work, they fear being beholden to
| other people. Ain't nobody hiring a contractor under the terms
| of _" Yeah, go ahead and build me a house however you like,
| whenever you feel like it. I don't care about what you do."_
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| 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 seems like extremely high risk,
| because they're going to be looking for this everywhere now. Why
| would they not just steal two or three cars, which would never
| make the news. They must be skilled to pull something like that
| off in a night.
|
| Edit: Another user linked the street view, apparently the article
| image wasn't the actual tower. So based on that it's much less
| metal even.
| zdragnar wrote:
| 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.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| They're targeting rail infrastructure here, but a lot of
| copper there is being replaced with cheaper materials like
| aluminium.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Humans will always be the problem, because there is one
| immutable fact about humans that history has proven too many
| times to list.
|
| There. Is. Always. An. Asshole.
|
| Always.
| throwanem wrote:
| 'People' is a remarkable way to misspell 'poverty'.
| mcphage wrote:
| 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.
| throwanem wrote:
| To do safely, sure.
| zdragnar wrote:
| 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.
| throwanem wrote:
| > Poverty is not itself a reason to commit crime.
|
| 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.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Limited experience based on what my friend told me (I
| grew up in a rural community, so very different
| dynamics): it starts in schools.
|
| Gangs start recruiting young. It's a fast way to get
| "friends" who have more than you do- the illusion of
| power, material wealth, so on.
|
| Furthermore, attempting to do well in school means your
| fellow students will bully you for "acting white".
|
| If your parents didn't do well in school, they are less
| likely to pressure you to do well. They might be working
| long hours to make ends meet, or living on disability or
| either form of welfare. This will exclude you from many
| extracurricular activities which require parental support
| as well.
|
| If you see your parents barely making ends meet, and
| gangbangers offer you the illusion of more, and everyone
| around you says you'll never amount to anything by
| studying or trying to get good grades, it isn't hard to
| see the allure.
|
| So, for these students at least, poverty is a culture and
| the trap becomes lifelong once you get a record and can't
| get a job anywhere that pays better than minimum wage.
| Rinse and repeat with the next generation.
|
| My friend was fortunate enough to have a father who
| pressured him to do well in school, and to go on to
| secondary education. He escaped the trap, but few of the
| people he grew up with did the same.
| cyberax wrote:
| 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.
| mecsred wrote:
| You read this comment on a public forum.
| cyberax wrote:
| Sorry, I meant to say on an official forum, where
| speakers are identified by name.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| 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.
| cornhole wrote:
| i blame it on culture
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > People are why we can't have nice things, apparently.
|
| Always has been. With that said, this is incredibly
| impressive from a logistics perspective. Hire these folks for
| demolition and salvage work.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Or arrest them, convict them, and make them pickup garbage
| on weekends.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Good luck with that. You can't even arrest people who
| break into vehicles in broad daylight.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Good luck with that, someone will have to supervise them.
| And supervise the supervisors.
| chasd00 wrote:
| 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
| remember seeing people pushing shopping carts in Old East
| Dallas filled with copper cables, pipes, and other stuf.
|
| There was a story probably once a month about someone
| breaking into a power substation or some other high voltage
| area to try and steal copper and electrocuting themselves.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My local scrapyard requires a photo ID before they will pay
| for anything other than aluminum cans. Doesn't seem like a
| complicated solution.
| thfuran wrote:
| And it's a good thing that fake IDs are illegal so
| criminals can't circumvent that kind of thing.
| supertrope wrote:
| Metal thieves who are exchanging wiring for cash for
| drugs are even more impulsive than other street
| criminals. Sometimes raising the bar a bit can make a big
| difference.
| chasd00 wrote:
| that's what started to turn the tide (along with falling
| prices) the police started cracking down on scrap yards
| buying obviously stolen property.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Around here most of them require an electrical or
| plumbing contractor's license to sell that stuff. There's
| an online system to verify the license, and one of the
| conditions of the license is purchasing a bond and
| insurance.
| brewtide wrote:
| In an area around nearby, years ago (in the sticks...)
| someone went up the power lines through the woods and clipped
| all the bare grounding wire from miles of poles from about 8
| feet up to the ground.
|
| Seems like a lot of work for low money.
| Xirgil wrote:
| Criminals don't make sense to you because you're trying to
| explain their behavior with your own thought process. You're
| likely much smarter than they are, with a better understanding
| of risk vs reward and lower impulsivity. Also you can't explain
| criminal behavior with purely financial motivations. Car
| thieves are not making $33k per car. A lot of them don't even
| sell them, just steal what's inside and use them for a joy ride
| (ask me how I know). Lots of petty criminals and drug dealers
| are not making very much money, especially for the level of
| risk. But compared to a traditional job it's much less
| restrictive, fun and exciting, lets you hang out with your
| friends most of the time, and has a lot more social clout with
| their peers than traditional employment.
| dreamworld wrote:
| IMO, they should be playing games or sports instead. Give
| people more opportunities to do just what you said (instead
| of working supposedly boring (at least to them) jobs),
| instead of hurting people/property to achieve that.
| yreg wrote:
| Reminds me of sand theft. Apparently, sometimes even an entire
| beach gets dug up and stolen.
|
| Planet Money did an episode on it.
|
| https://www.npr.org/transcripts/628890875
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Why would they not just steal two or three cars,
|
| Is this a real question? You're coming at this with the
| position that car theft is so easy because it's easy to get
| away with and has a high rate of return. That only works if you
| have the connections with chop shops or exporters to be able to
| get money for that car. You also have to have the skills/tools
| for being able to steal the car in the first place. To flip
| that, the people that do steal cars would probably have no clue
| on how to dismantle a steel structure, have the means to
| load/haul that steel, or know what recycling places will even
| buy from them without immediately reporting it to police.
| me_me_me wrote:
| 100k between 4-5 people, is a lot of money for a lot of people.
| Especially metal stealing ones
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| I highly doubt it's worth 100k as scrap. The "6 figures"
| price tag was to replace it. Maybe they have some way to sell
| this equipment for its original purpose, but if they are
| selling it for scrap it'll go for a tiny fraction of what it
| would be worth in working condition.
| chasd00 wrote:
| also, if the scrapyard suspected it was stolen they
| probably wouldn't buy it. I bet it's at the bottom of a
| river somewhere.
| vcg3rd wrote:
| ~5 years ago when I was driving back and forth to an adjacent
| state to work on our house to get it on the market, I discover
| my ground wire had been stolen. It was no more than 2' long and
| was the only exposed wire outside. The house was on a very
| rural 2 mile road with only 7-8 other houses. They had to be
| desperate.
| asadotzler wrote:
| The tower can get some stub legs welded on and it'll be good as
| new, at least $10,000 worth, maybe as much as $15,000. The 200'
| self supporting tower I've been eying is $11,000 used.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| There's no discussion, but a 200 foot tower doesn't come down
| without evidence on the ground unless you have, well, a 200 foot
| crane.
| russdill wrote:
| If you cut the wires on the type of radio tower, it will come
| down on its own.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| Yes, certainly. But the point is that it will leave *VERY*
| obvious indications that it was felled in such a way.
| eschneider wrote:
| My money is on this being insurance fraud.
| roamerz wrote:
| It was an AM station so I wouldn't rule out political
| motivations.
| shrx wrote:
| _The estimate, he said, is expected to be six figures. Elmore
| did not have insurance on that property._
|
| edit: quote from https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/someone-stole-
| a-jasper-radio...
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| A better source than the tabloid New York Post:
| https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/someone-stole-a-jasper-radio...
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! We've changed to that from
| https://nypost.com/2024/02/07/news/radio-station-baffled-
| aft....
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Meth heads are REALLY stepping up their game.
| chasd00 wrote:
| 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.
| cafard wrote:
| A lot of Priuses in my neighborhood lost their catalytic
| converters a few winters ago. Mostly this happened at night,
| so there was more time than for whoever hit your friend's
| car..
| fragmede wrote:
| so in defense, you can have a catalytic converter cage put
| in, but it seems they will just cut through that as well to
| get at the catalytic converter.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Skilled thieves can do that with a battery powered saw in
| less than 30 seconds, there's been more than enough videos on
| youtube showing just how easy it is.
|
| Cheap battery powered tools have made _a lot_ of crime a hell
| of a lot easier.
| euroderf wrote:
| Just wait for the _drones_ that bring the saw and haul away
| the converter.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It takes about 30 seconds to make two cuts through exhaust
| pipe with a one handed battery sawzall or battery angle
| grinder.
|
| https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-M18-FUEL-18V-Lithium-I.
| ..
| jack_riminton wrote:
| My BS detector is going off on this. It's such a monumental
| effort for what would quickly become pretty worthless scrap
| asadotzler wrote:
| Someone who needs a 200' self-supporting tower. Getting one
| from Rohn is probably $15,000 to $20,000 and more than half
| that used. I've been shopping towers for several years and when
| I read the headline my first thought was "yeah, Starlink needs
| a clear view of the sky" not "some meth head tryin' to sell
| steel for scrap."
| hluska wrote:
| The world has changed in odd ways. Ten or twenty years ago, this
| would seem like very ambitious drug addicts. Today, there's a
| real chance that this will turn out to be a prank for Internet
| cred. And as strange or unlikely as that sounds, a guy recently
| made the news for intentionally crashing a plane for internet
| cred. I sure never would have imagined that.
|
| We live in interesting times and that's not always a good thing.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| 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
| lxgr wrote:
| Scrap metal thieves are indeed not always the brightest. I've
| heard of cases of attempted thefts of (powered) power lines of
| electrified railways...
| boringg wrote:
| I should feel bad for the outcome, but i don't....
| 486sx33 wrote:
| I agree. A tire manufacturing plant closed in my home city
| back in the early 2000s. I guy we knew from high school
| wanted the copper that came to the plant under ground in a
| vault. He figured for some reason it was disco ... and blam
| fried his legs and hands completely cooked all his nerves in
| them and apparently one of his teeth exploded.. I mean , why
| would they turn service off to a manufacturing plant when
| they can just pull the meter ?
| beAbU wrote:
| 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.
| boudin wrote:
| It reminds me of this story, an elderly woman cutting Armenia
| off the internet after mistaking a fiber with copper
| https://www.neowin.net/news/75-year-old-granny-cuts-off-
| the-...
| Animats wrote:
| "Better Ads Experience Program Certified"?
| moioci wrote:
| Jasper has always had a unique brand of criminal:
|
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-29-mn-60726...
| standardly wrote:
| Fun fact, my grandparents moved into that house. It was cheap,
| and within a year they found part of an undetonated pipe bomb
| in the shed in the back which the ATF came and confiscated.
|
| Jasper is a strange place. You hear of meth heads, being in
| north central AL and all. But the town has a unique history and
| there are actually a lot of really rich folks and nice
| neighborhoods there. It's an old mining town with a lot of old
| money, and rich folk from all over move there because of Smith
| lake. It used to be "the hitman capital" of the US and I've
| heard stories from a pilot friend of an umarked and
| unidentified black leer jet transporting shady
| individuals/cargo that used to frequent the Walker County
| Airport.
| csa wrote:
| Jasper and the surrounding area is very similar to Shittown (of
| podcast fame).
|
| Crazy shit happens there for random reasons that probably won't
| make sense to an outsider.
|
| This could be as simple as someone having a beef with a person at
| the station or one of the content sources that the AM station
| broadcasts.
|
| It could be something as simple as drunken weekend shenanigans.
| Why? Because they could.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| This is totally Walker county. It was an AM station so it
| probably took the owner the weekend to look into it. We've got
| local stations near me that relay to the top of a nearby mountain
| and weather or road conditions can delay repairing that local
| station. I have family in Jasper, this really happened it's wild
| that's it's national news.
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