Cathleen Allison/Nevada AppealCarson City Sheriff's Deputy Gary Denham and Detective Craig Lowe talk Friday at the T.E. Bertagnolli & Associates plant. Sheriff's officials are investigating the theft of copper wiring from equipment at the Brunswick Canyon Road business.
Thieves ruined a $70,000 generator at T.E. Bertagnolli & Associates in Carson City when they stripped it of its copper, according to the Carson City Sheriff's Office.
The theft, the third of its kind for the company in the past year, happened within the past two months at the general engineering contractor's Brunswick Canyon Road plant, said Detective Craig Lowe of the Carson City Sheriff's Department.
He said the suspects are two former employees because the generator was in a closed trailer, but homeless people live in the Carson River Canyon near the building and they haven't been ruled out.
"It could have just been someone paying attention," he said.
The price of copper has been steady over the last year, but increased steeply over the past decade.
Copper and other metal thieves usually sell the material to scrap metal shops, Lowe said.
Wayne Taylor, owner of Comstock Metals in Mound House, said copper sells for between $1.30 and $2.30 a foot, depending on its quality.
His business goes through checks to try to make sure the copper isn't stolen, he said, but sometimes it's difficult to tell where it came from.
"It's like someone stealing flour and making wheat and selling it to you," he said.
Tim Bertagnolli, owner of T.E. Bertagnolli & Associates, said thefts of copper are frustrating because the damage caused is so high compared to what thieves get for its sale.
The generator will also be expensive to fix, he said, and future theft is hard to guard against.
He said he's thought about hiring security officers, but they have stolen copper from his business before.
"It has a very devastating impact," he said.
Other copper thefts from his company included incidents in Fallon about a year ago and in Mustang about two months ago.
Bertagnolli said all three people involved in the Fallon theft have been convicted.
Recent copper thefts in the area include a man who was sentenced to prison in October for taking 700 pounds of copper wire from Sierra Pacific Power in Carson City and thieves who took copper wiring from the Golden Eagle Regional Sports Complex in Sparks last week.
- Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.