How would you fix this problem?

Thieves in Colombia steal manhole covers and sell them for scrap. A child falls into an open manhole and dies. I'm sure we have enough brainpower here to come up with a solution. What would you do? http://home.bellsouth.net/s/editorial.dll?pnum=1&bfromind=2219&eeid=4806762&_sitecat=1505&dcatid=0&eetype=article&render=y&ac=-2&ck=&ch=ne&rg=blsadstrgt

How do you steal a 110 pound manhole from the middle of the street without somebody stopping you? Ok, I guess that until this kid died nobody cared, but hopefully somebody will stop the next attempt.

Charge the junkyards that buy them maybe? Something about buying stolen property like most states here have.

Make manhole covers out of something less reusable. Like 1.5" thick opaque Lexan.
Or redesign the covers with some kind of locking mechanism.

1) Carbon composite manhole covers

2) Sting operations placed at the scrap dealers

3) Severe penalties for thieves caught by #2

make it ilegal for scrap yards to by them

4) A'sploding dye packs on the underside of the manhole covers. Secret combination required to disarm them. :devil:

How about locking covers?

110 pounds of iron recycles for about $4, here in CA.

Some places are now making their manhole covers concrete "plugs" which have far less value than metal covers.

In poor places, this is common. Another "big ticket" item stolen for scrap is electrical wire - people rip down the power lines to sell the copper wire as scrap, which as you can expect causes problems for those further down the lines, and costs a whole lot more to replace than the theives make on the scrap.

Alot of places just tack weld them in. It's easy for the work crews to grind off the welds, but not the theives....

Balefire said:

In poor places, this is common. Another "big ticket" item stolen for scrap is electrical wire - people rip down the power lines to sell the copper wire as scrap, which as you can expect causes problems for those further down the lines, and costs a whole lot more to replace than the theives make on the scrap.

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One guy recently got electromazootzed by trying to do that at a power substation. He was trying to steal wire off of a transformer. That was live.

what the world is the matter with people these days there lucky im not in charge

raggie33 said:

what the world is the matter with people these days there lucky im not in charge

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A Raggie smackdown!! Now we're talkin' :devil:

im thinking ill start one pw dont these people think that some one will get hurt?imagine hiting it with a car going 45? for petes sakes they could find cans that are litter and pick em up to make money

I agree. Hitting one of thsoe open manholes would be devastating.

When I was a kid I used to collect pop bottles around the schoolyard and turn them in for a deposit. I think it was 2 cents per bottle. Not any great fortune but it also helped keep the area free of broken bottles and glass fragments. There have got to be better things to collect for scrap than manhole covers.

Of course the scrap yards that willingly accept manhole covers are just as guilty, since they know where they came from.

i think i got 10 cents per 16 ounce bottle and perhaps a quater for the bigger bottle but i forget o and cokes was always on sale for 28 cnets plus diposet at cumberland farms lol

Tack welding the covers works in other parts of the world. It's cheap and easy. Low tech and low cost are the ways to go in areas like this.

Thefts like this are usually the result of utter poverty, and larceny knows no bounds anyway. Better to make the thefts harder to accomplish and thus make the streets safer.

And the theft of charged electrical wiring almost always solves itself. This type of crime has a really steep learning curve -- not as much chance for practice makes perfect. Another result of it sucks to be poor and criminally minded.