Tip For Aspiring Cable Vandals: Read The Newspaper
A $250,00 reward was posted for info leading to the capture of whoever clipped at least 500 strands of underground fiber-optic south of San Francisco last week.
From SF Chronicle (bold is my own):
Public safety crews that rely on 911 calls, hospitals trying to access medical records and people who wanted to make a landline or cell phone call, use an ATM or make a purchase with a credit card found services down...Considering their importance to public safety and the economy, fiber-optic cables are not highly secured. The manholes are on public streets, and their covers generally are not that difficult to remove... The typical manhole cover, a 250- to 350-pound disc of cast iron, can be removed with the use of a J-hook, a steel pole with a hook at one end, or any similar tool.
Am I the only one who finds it odd when "news" of a crime serves as a helpful tip to less clever, would-be copycats? It's like writing a blog post and linking to this and then this.
[image via flickr]
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sure, I would have never been able to figure it out without the newspaper telling me.
I'm sure would-be vandals sat for years puzzling on how they could remove a manhole cover; one of the 21st Century's greatest greatest mysteries.
What #1 said. I doubt I'd have trouble figuring out how to lift a manhole cover if I wanted to. The more interesting information is at the beginning of the sentence, that fiber optic cables can be easily accessed from manholes.
"South of San Francisco". Hands in the air for everyone who hasn't heard of San Jose?
Sorry, always feel like my neighborhood is the ugly stepsister in the closet when musical acts hit SF and Oakland but ignore South Bay...
Aw shoot, now I notice the mention of a similar event in San Carlos, I eat crow now.
Whatever you do, don't type "remove manhole cover" into google, and certainly not GIS either.
From the second link-
'This ingenious tool offers big cutter performance without long handles to tackle large cutting jobs in tight spaces such as manholes.'
I can has on T shirt? Plsss?
Publishing how to use a lever is irresponsible?
*faceplam*
The big barrier here is knowing which manhole cover to pull, not how to pull it. And once you're down that hole, which thing do you cut?
(In San Francisco if you want to remove a manhole cover easily just wait for a PG&E fault to trigger an underground explosion. They'll rain from the sky.)
insulated handles or not, cut the wrong thing and you're dead.
"cut the wrong thing and you're dead" - Nothing some thermite wont fix, from a distance!