The work on the replica Cameron Street Bridge was set back when crews arrived Tuesday morning to discover their mini-excavator had been stolen.
"It looks like they came in with an equipment trailer pulled behind a pickup," said Dean Price, owner of Nahanni Construction, the company doing the bridge work at Cottonwood Island Park where the theft occurred. "It looks like it was quite the load to pull, but they got away with it sometime during the night."
The thieves so underestimated the weight of the little machine that it broke the ramps they used to get it onto the trailer. They left the damaged ramps behind. Tracks showed the trailer's labour when it was driven away.
Police were on-scene at first light to start the process of following clues. Prince George RCMP spokeswoman Const. Lesley Smith said these sorts of thefts were becoming more common, but investigators have had some recent success.
"We recently (Thursday) heard from Fraser Lake that they were able to recover a stolen skid-steer tractor and a quad from some thieves," she said. "A trucker was on the road and saw the equipment being transported and felt it was suspicious, and called that in. The police were able to intercept that activity and arrest two people already well known to police."
Price has hopes that someone working on River Road at the CN Rail yard or at one of the mills nearby saw something suspicious. Police encourage anyone driving anywhere in the region late Monday night or early Tuesday morning to try to remember if you saw a trailer loaded with this piece of equipment.
"We are experiencing thefts of heavy equipment from construction sites," said Smith. "They are being stolen to sell, and to use for the criminals' own building projects. Sometimes thieves are given a list of items that someone wants them to steal, and they go out and find those items. Heavy equipment is usually quite expensive so people think they only have to pay a minimal price for excavation projects that often cost a lot of money."
There is even an organized crime element that collects stolen industrial equipment for shipment overseas. Whatever the motive, it is becoming a costly issue for the construction industry in general. A website dedicated to this form of crime was established by the Ontario Sewer and Watermain Construction Association offering information in five different languages.
"Caterpillar, John Deere and Case all keep accurate files on all reported stolen equipment. Many times, stolen equipment has been brought into a dealer for repair work or parts and has been recovered because of the manufacturer's stolen equipment database," the website advised. "Have a welder inscribe your company name on the buckets, boom and frame of your equipment," or prevent hook-and-tow thefts by installing a wheel boot to parked machines, or replace your equipment's wheels with steel "square wheels" you can weld up yourself, whenever you leave the worksite unattended.
The Nahanni machine was a Caterpillar 308-C, which can be started with a standard generic Caterpillar key. The company is doing away with open access ignitions and going to programable chips that can be coded individually or for your fleet of machines.
Smith warned that this is the time of year thieves prey on a number of vehicles, including those left running to warm up and snowmobiles that are not chained or blocked securely.
Anyone with information on this theft, or any disappearances of equipment from construction sites, is asked to call Prince George RCMP at 250-561-3300 or Crime Stoppers at www.pgcrimestoppers.bc.ca / 1-800-222-TIPS.
