Outage that left hundreds without power in Indio caused by copper wire theft

Authorities said an outage that left hundreds of customers without power in Indio Tuesday night was caused by a copper wire thief.

Power went out to approximately 735 customers at around 9:30 p.m., according to the Imperial Irrigation District.

"The theft of the ground wires caused an underground primary wire to burn up, forcing district energy construction crews to install and test replacement materials, a task that was completed in just under 11 hours," reads an IID notice.

Customers in the following areas were affected: North Shore Drive south to New Jackson Street and Jackson Street east to the Coachella Canal.

IID was able to restore power to 193 customers by 12:23 a.m. Wednesday. Crews completed full restoration to all remaining customers by 8:27 a.m.

“This is a very serious, brazen and potentially deadly act of theft,” explained IID’s Kyle Bryant, assistant manager for Energy Systems Operations. “While IID worked to get the power back on as quickly as possible, we can’t state clearly enough that attempts to steal electrical infrastructure is not only costly to all energy customers, it can easily cost people their lives. It’s just not worth it and it must be avoided at all costs.”

IID asks the public to report any suspicious activity around any of its infrastructure.