North Vancouver RCMP and BC Hydro are investigating yet another case of vandalism of BC Hydro transformers in North Vancouver.
The outage that shut down Seycove Secondary School as well affected Mount Seymour Parkway and Mount Seymour Road area on Wednesday was caused by vandalism, said BC Hydro spokesperson Susie Rieder.
Rieder said the latest case of vandalism was similar to several incidents BC Hydro had seen in the Mount Seymour and Parkgate area previously.
Yesterday, someone seemed to have drilled holes into a pad-mounted transformer box again, causing an outage at the 1200 block of Caledonia Avenue that resulted in the closure of Seycove Secondary school, Rieder said.
The act was extremely dangerous, she added.
“Vandalism to our equipment is extremely dangerous and can cause power outages, fires and oil spills. Tampering with a box can also be deadly — transformers have about 12,500 volts of electricity,” she said.
She said North Vancouver RCMP was currently investigating these incidents.
In July, BC Hydro reported that at least four transformers in the Seymour community had holes drilled in them, leading to power outages, oil spills and transformer explosions.
The transformers that were vandalised were all in the same area – along the edge of Northland golf course. BC Hydro believes it is the same person responsible for each incident. It had cost BC Hydro approximately $150,000 to replace and repair the equipment.
Perhaps the guilty party is a neighbour who fears that transformers cause cancer. The police should knock door-to-door in the neighbourhood asking if anyone knows of anyone who is paranoid of EMFs (Electromagnetic Fields). I doubt a kid or teen did this.