New York Times, April 18, 2000
Power-Line Thieves Loot Russia, Often Risking Death or Maiming
By PATRICK E. TYLER
PROKOPYEVSK, Russia, April 15 -- Maksim Naumenko, a 12-year-old boy with a
slight build and a cherub's face, had just stolen a goodly length of copper
wire from the Tyrginskaya Coal Mine one afternoon last month when he and
his buddy, Sergei, returned to the place where they had spotted a second
cable that would add to the day's haul.
"The first one was dead and we cut it and hid it, and then we came back to
take another one, but it turned out to be live," Maksim said weakly from
the intensive care unit where he was recovering last week.
When Maksim reached for the wire with his left hand, a "bright explosion"
went off before his eyes and the current seized him violently. Somehow he
managed to pull his hand away, but when he looked down, all he could see
and smell was charred flesh. The electric shock had so burned his thumb and
forefinger that they later had to be amputated.
That was more than unfortunate, because two years ago, when Maksim was 10,
he lost two fingers on his right hand while trying to steal copper wire
from a power pole.
In an epidemic that has led to 700 electrocutions nationwide and more than
500 deaths from electric shock last year, thieves and pilferers -- among
them the desperately poor and homeless like Maksim -- and criminal gangs
are shredding Russia's networks of electric transmission lines,
communication cables and anything else that can be sold as scrap metal in a
market that has surged tenfold to twentyfold in the last five years.
Government power engineers estimate that more than 15,000 miles of power
lines have been pulled down in recent years from the country's electrical
grid, plunging millions of Russian households into darkness for weeks at a
time. Thousands of additional miles of line are disappearing from telephone
poles, railroad power systems and military complexes.
"This is a very serious problem across the country," said Aleksandr V.
Trapeznikov, spokesman for the national electric conglomerate, whose
engineers have been trying to cope with the calamity. Last year alone, Mr.
Trapeznikov said, more than 2,000 tons of high-voltage aluminum cables were
ripped off their pylons, at a cost of more than $40 million. Some of the
material is melted down into ingots and shipped out of the ports of St.
Petersburg and Vladivostok to markets in Europe, the Middle East and China.
The rest goes out as heaps and coils.
Here among the coal fields of southwestern Siberia, some are calling this
phenomenon the "copper rush," but aluminum and other nonferrous metals are
also in great demand as strong world prices for scrap metal have added to
the incentive in these times of economic depression in Russia to attack the
country's foundations and sell the bits for hard currency abroad.
The crisis has seen high-voltage lines stripped off their towers and
nuclear submarines cut off from communication with their national
commanders. Aluminum phone booths have disappeared in some cities, while
rocket motors and fuel tanks, torpedo parts and copper shell casings have
flooded out of military warehouses and into illegal markets.
Full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/041800russia-electricity.html
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
