Utility removed stolen electric meter before 8 were poisoned

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Utility removed stolen electric meter before 8 were poisoned
By JULIET LINDERMAN, Associated Press | April 7, 2015 | Updated: April 7, 2015 3:18pm

PRINCESS ANNE, Md. (AP) — Todd, a 36-year-old divorced kitchen worker, were accidentally poisoned by carbon monoxide from the gas-powered generator they were using to keep warm after their electricity was cut off, Princess Anne Police Chief Scott Keller Tuesday.

He said Delmarva Power has been subpoenaed to document exactly what it did when.

"I'm just numb. I'm just numb. Like it's a nightmare but it's not," the children's mother, Tyisha Luneice Chambers, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "If I had known he was without electricity, I would have helped."

Police responding to a missing persons report found their bodies Monday at the one-story wood-frame home on Maryland's Eastern Shore after school workers, friends and Todd's supervisor at work had knocked on the door with no answer.




Read more: http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Utility-removed-stolen-electric-meter-before-8-6184390.php

[Brickbat]

1. That article is badly garbled. Here's a more useful one.

http://www.wboc.com/story/28739807/police-8-dead-in-princess-anne-home-generator-found-without-gas

[Orrex]

3. "Utility Removed Removed Stolen Electric Meter Before 8 Were Poisoned"

Yeah, that's that's much better.

You're right, though--that first one is terrible. JULIET LINDERMAN should hire a proofreader.

[Brickbat]

5. I think it's just a garbled feed or someone sent it on the wire prematurely.

No excuse for the headline on the one I posted, though!

[Jesus Malverde]

2. .

[forest444]

4. It's a disturbing trend that utility boards are increasingly going Wall Street on their communities.

Longtime Southern California residents might recall the incident in February 2000, in which hundreds of gallons of raw sewage spilled down Aliso Creek. Aliso Beach, a couple of miles south of downtown Laguna, is favorite spot for surfers and usually attracts sizable crowds of beachgoers as well. Dozens of people were hospitalized (including an acquaintance of mine, who lost his senses of taste and smell due to infection).

What was less known at the time was that a battle was raging between activists and the Irvine Water Company over the grotesquely top-heavy management structure in the utility, which serves most of Orange County south of the 55 (the more upscale section of O.C.). Activists had obtained considerable utility customer support for a proposal that would limit the IWC Board to 3 members, as well as cap their salaries and staff/office budgets; if memory serves, the board had something like 7 of 8 members, each collecting $300,000 in salary and employing a staff of a dozen or more (many of which were reputedly friends, family, and/or mistresses).

The proposal was finally poised for adoption when - surprise! - a series of sewage spills took place from the IWC's Aliso Creek processing plant, each more serious than the previous one. After three or four of these -culminating with the February 2000 incident- the proposal was suddenly withdrawn.

And the board lived happily ever after.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. We push people to the limit

them push them the extra inch.

[rhett o rick]

7. No one in America should have to freeze to death or die trying to keep warm. nm

[NutmegYankee]

8. Now I'm really angry.

Delmarva Power said it did not cut off the family's electricity because they were behind on their bills, but rather for their own good.

way to look out for the family Delmarva Power! May you burn in hell!

[angrychair]

11. love that logic

Like "man shot to death while trying to commit suicide"

[longship]

16. Or, kind of like this...

Two police officers go to the site of a shooting, one a rookie and one his supervisor.

The supervisor says, "Well. It looks like we have a suicide here."

The rookie cop responds, "But sir, he was shot in the back three times!"

The supervisor sadly shakes his head, "Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! Yes, a particularly bad case of suicide."

[One_Life_To_Give]

20. So leave power hooked up with no permits or inspections?

Should the house burn down, then who will be to blame? Without the proper permits signed off there is no way to know if the installation and wiring meets code requirements or not. Could just as easily have been 100A service running thru an extension cord.

[NutmegYankee]

21. Replacing a meter or removal/installation is a permit exception in most locations.

And given the age of the structure, I'm sure it had power to code.

[One_Life_To_Give]

22. Not in Delmarva and I doub't most utilities would accept the Liability without independent inspectio

Before your service can be installed and power turned on
, your electrician must apply for and Delmarva Power
must receive an Independent Authorized Inspection
of the electrical wiring (called a “cut-in-card”)

http://www.delmarva.com/uploadedFiles/wwwdelmarvacom/New%20Service%20md.pdf

Straight from Delmarva Power.

I can't imagine any Utilities Legal department letting them hookup any customer without some documentation which effectively absolves them from responsibility/liability for any downstream improper wiring/installation.

[NutmegYankee]

34. Wrong. That is for a new house.

Existing homes do not require that.

[cosmicone]

9. So very sad

[DeSwiss]

10. K&R

CAPITALISM.

[Thor_MN]

12. Something isn't right there, if the meter is removed, that will cut power to the building.

If the meter was stolen and they were current on the bills, why was the meter not replaced by the utility?

[jmowreader]

13. They weren't "current on the bills" because there never were any bills

They were illegally tapped into the electricity - someone used a stolen power meter to put this house on the grid.

I wonder about two things here: did he have a clause in his lease that required him to maintain utilities to keep from being evicted, in which case he thought running a generator outside would tip off the landlord he didn't have electricity, and was he using the generator set as a space heater?

[Thor_MN]

14. That makes more sense.

[840high]

17. Thanks.

[dolphinsandtuna]

15. seven kids between the ages of 13 and 6

[jtuck004]

18. 8 dead from corporate terror, not a cop fired a shot. Funny how people get all hot and

bothered over the sensational things, and let crap like this happen to our neighbors.

No different from terrorists killing people with a bomb.

Rest in peace, folks. It may not be over.

[Amishman]

24. no corporate terror here, just 7 children who died because their father was an idiot and a thief

I'm sorry, but you cannot reasonably blame the electric company for this one.

The father was stealing electric. The company was correct to stop the theft.

I know it is easy to blame corporations for everything, but occasionally they are not the bad guy. If you want to point fingers, then the blame should go on the father for not getting help and generally being an idiot. Maryland has an Electric Universal Service Program to help people in these very situations. This program is administered in partnership with the utility companies. Instead of using the safety net in place, he decided to steal. When that failed, his next mistake cost his entire family.

[jtuck004]

25. Your ignorant and unsupportable assumption aside, the profits companies steal from

workers could easily have paid for this. The electric company and their shareholders are more concerned about profits than any person.

Maybe they should have a program to see if their decisions are going to kill anyone, instead of parading around a program that failed that family.

You don't know jack shit about the interplay between the utility and this father and those young lives, who deserved a lot better than your sneering and judgmental view. You can take your lack of compassion else where, since I won't waste my time with ass-clown Republican attitudes toward my neighbors.

Don't bother to reply, unless your ego needs it, since you will be on ignore and I won't ever see it.

[Amishman]

26. Its the simple truth

unsupportable? There is an excellent assistance program in place, which would have prevented this situation. That is a simple fact. The father never attempted to be a legitimate customer in the almost six months at the residence (as others have pointed out). The assistance program did not fail him, as he never tried to legally have service.

The father certainly appears to have been a thief. He certainly was stupid to run a generator inside an enclosed space.

Seems pretty straight forward, and very tragic no matter who is to blame.

[snooper2]

28. can you see it now?

[One_Life_To_Give]

32. Maybe Gov't should have recognized people inhabiting a dwelling with questionable CO?

Where was local Government in all of this? An occupied dwelling without electricity? Where I am from that automatically suspends the Certificate of Occupancy when the Electric Service is shut down. More than the utility I blame the local officials for their negligence or apathy in contributing to the death of those poor kids.

[jtuck004]

33. FDR said people needed jobs, purpose, things that help build self-respect. And we

did ok at that for a while, but people I think have forgotten (because we didn't make it part of school) that it takes investment to grow, whether it is a country or a business.

If we as a country understood the need to make sure opportunity is out there, this would not have to happen. Instead we pretend that the individual is as powerful as the government, as if ANYTHING that guy did would have made a difference in an economy which is built on a government policy of supporting the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

All while people like the ass clown and ex-Treasury Secretary and friend of many bank$ter/lootersTimothy "Killer" Geithner writes books like Stress Test to tell us how important it is to keep our heel on the necks of those in poverty so the assets of those who have them will stay inflated. And then proceeds to write out the policy we are following today.

Since about 1990 all we seem prepared to do is invest in more bank$ters. So that is what we are growing. And when we find they aren't edible, we are all gonna be in a whole lot of trouble.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

27. Other than that, Amishman, welcome to DU,

Last edited Thu Apr 9, 2015, 03:23 PM - Edit history (1)

where we are always open to ideas, unless it's one we don't like.

You might as well put me on "ignore" too, jtuck004.

[petronius]

31. I suspect it was not the father who was the thief: if they'd only lived there since

November, I'd bet that the home was rented as 'utilities included,' and it's the landlord who was thieving. (Just my WAG, of course.) And while it was a horrible error to run the generator indoors, a general characterization of "idiot" seems too harsh.

That said, I agree that it's not correct to blame the utility here. They recovered stolen property, which was perhaps installed unsafely, and took (as far as I can tell) no action on the theft. My only criticism would be that they should have (if they didn't) made some contact with the resident, even if only through a door-hanger, explaining what happened and what resources were available...

[happyslug]

19. Appears the home NEVER had electric service as long as that family lived in that home.

Later Tuesday, the utility revealed that the rental home never had legal power while the Todds lived there. The utility said the electricity had been disconnected in October, and there was no request to reconnect it after the family moved there in November.

"Through the use of smart meter technology, Delmarva Power discovered a stolen electric meter was being used at the home on March 25, 2015. Delmarva Power disconnected the illegally connected meter for safety reasons and to comply with standard protocol. Delmarva Power did not disconnect electric service at this address for nonpayment," its statement said.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Eight-Dead-in-Princess-Anne-After-Carbon-Monoxide-Incident-298813331.html

[seveneyes]

23. Two pieces of 3/4 inch copper pipe hammered flat

If you have no meter, otherwise just remove the Mylar insulators they put over the existing meter tabs.

Beats freezing to death or CO poisoning.

[snooper2]

29. Arkansas Man Dies Tampering With Electric Meter After Service Shut Off

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/07/31/arkansas-man-dies-tampering-with-electric-meter-after-service-shut-off/

[Ms. Yertle]

30. The meter as removed in October,

before the family moved in. Whose responsibility would it have been to get a new one? Would it be the landlord, or the tenant? I can't believe it would have been legal for the landlord to rent a property without electricity, but tenant should have known to call the utility to make sure he got power.

[Liberal_in_LA]

35. very sad event