MILTON, Ky. — Hundreds of people in Trimble County were left without power after copper wire thieves got inside an electrical substation in Milton, KY on Friday night, police said.
About 1,500 residents in the small town on the Ohio River experienced the outage for about three hours on Saturday afternoon -- a sweltering summer day with temperatures in the 90s.
"I just worried about everyone affected," said Mary Winburn, a longtime Milton resident. "Especially the older generation, if they have any illnesses or end up having a heat stroke or whatever the situation might be. I just worry about everyone in that situation, not only my family but others that were involved.”
Charles Kelton, the Trimble County sheriff, said the suspect cut thick copper wires from inside the substation after hopping over a barbed wire fence on Friday night. The next day, Shelby Energy Cooperative shut off power for all 1,500 customers around 1:15 p.m., and it was restored by 4:07 p.m., according to a Facebook post.
“Because it is such high voltage, the safest thing and the quickest thing we can do to work on it is to take the power down for everybody,” said Mary Beth Dennis, communications director for the Shelby Energy Cooperative.
Winburn worried for her children and family who were trying to stay cool despite the outage.
“I told them to just put a towel around their neck to stay cool until the air conditioning comes back on," she said.
The Shelby Energy Cooperative is in charge of transmitting electricity to homes nearby. They said that power was restored to 970 customers in just under two hours, and the remaining residents felt relief in about three hours.
“All of those people who were without power for hours, some of those people have children, or they’re medically fragile," Dennis said. "And you’re just putting an extra taxing situation on them.”
This incident isn’t the first time the Trimble County sheriff has seen copper wire theft. But, Kelton added that it's one of the most egregious cases he's seen.
He said copper theft has decreased over the past 15 years because the price of copper has gone down, and scrap yards have been more vigilant about who is bringing metal in.
Plus, it’s highly dangerous.
“Anything that is in there that you touch, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it could harm you or kill you,” Kelton said.
He said the risk is not worth the reward “especially for a $15 paycheck."
Kelton said education about the potentially fatal risks is key to preventing more copper wire thefts.
There is no suspect and the investigation is still ongoing.