So Inventive, We Canadians, So Bored

*snort*

HALIFAX(CP) — Metal signs are disappearing from roads and highways across Nova Scotia as industrious thieves steal them and sell them for scrap.

A man in Cape Breton was recently accused of stealing about 700 kilograms worth of aluminum signs, cutting them into small pieces and selling them to a scrapyard for $800. The provincial Transportation Department in the Annapolis Valley has spent $87,000 replacing stolen signs that fetch thieves $3 to $4 apiece from scrap-metal dealers. “To replace them, it’s $100 or more each by the time you pay the labour costs,” said Bernie MacDonald, the department’s operations supervisor in MacLellans Brook, Pictou County.

While there have always been people taking signs to hang in their garage or basement, the problem intensifies when the price of aluminum goes up.

With scrap dealers now paying 90 cents US per pound for aluminum, the signs have become an easy target.

More than 200 signs have disappeared from the eastern end of the Annapolis Valley in recent weeks, including the theft of 63 on Nov. 1 alone.

“When the price went up, the signs went missing,” said Paul Stone, the provincial Transportation Department’s Middleton area manager. “When the price went down, they didn’t.”

Stone said someone used a circular saw to cut down the large metal support posts of a huge sign on Highway 101.

“If a driver goes off the road because someone’s taken a 90-cent sign, that’s what I’m worried about.”

Tony Gates, operations supervisor at the Transportation Department office in Middleton, said thieves have to be using power tools to get the signs off. Staff have been using locknuts and specialized bolts to attach them to the sign posts.

“The way we’re putting signs up now, you’d need a compressor,” he said. In some cases, staff even strip the bolts so they can’t be backed off.

“But they’re still getting them.”

One night a thief put a chain on some sign posts and pulled them out of the ground with a vehicle.

Comments

[james]

bizarre. so are they going to start stealing and selling wire from powerlines, like they do in third world countries? fucking hell.

[s.]

Hee hee! I love Cape Bretoners...What a weird story!