Copper thieves continued their assault on O'ahu buildings this week, pulling the drainage downspouts off the Mililani High School gymnasium and ripping 140 feet of wire from a remote Honolulu Board of Water Supply facility.

Mililani was the 11th public school struck by copper thieves since June, said the state Department of Education. At all but one, copper downspouts were the prized target for those who sell them to recyclers.

The downspouts at Mililani were taken during two nights, Wednesday and last Friday, said vice principal Jim Petersen. The six custom-made downspouts are 7 feet long, 10 inches wide and 3 inches deep, he said yesterday.

"The thing that really gets me about this is it's not attacking a faceless government bureaucracy, it is taking resources from kids," Petersen said.

The school does not yet have an estimate of the copper's worth or total damage, Petersen said.

In a separate incident, a water board work crew yesterday discovered the theft of copper feeder wire from an electrical junction box at the Barbers Point Non Potable Well Station on Farrington Highway, said Su Shin, water board spokeswoman.

The wire is about as thick as a man's thumb and worth about $1,000, Shin said yesterday.

The wire was not in use at the time and not carrying an electric charge, she said. The thief, or thieves, scaled a 6-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire to get to the copper, she said.

This was not the first theft from a Board of Water Supply facility. In May, police arrested a man as he allegedly removed copper siding and rain gutters from the roof of a pump station in Kapahulu. There have been other arrests, including a 29-year-old woman and 33-year-old man arrested in July after they were caught allegedly stealing copper pipe from a chicken-preparation plant on Kanakanui Street in Kalihi.

The soaring resale value of the metal — the price of copper has risen 200 percent in the last year — has spurred a crime wave on O'ahu since March. Schools, churches and streetlights have all been ransacked.

ROADWAY THEFTS

In the past three months, thieves stole wire and caused $108,000 in damage on state roadways. Crews are still working to restore lights on a Leeward stretch of H-1 Freeway and on H-2 heading into Mililani.

The stolen goods are hard to track because they are common, said Jill Tokuda, spokeswoman for Reynolds Recycling Inc.

"There are no real identifying marks on these items," she said. "If we get a call, it will be very hard for us to detect."

Tokuda recently advised officials at a church that was victimized to use a soldering gun to etch the church name into the thickest part of its remaining copper downspouts.

But because Reynolds records contact information for everyone it buys from and issues a check, thieves are probably not using the recycler, Tokuda said.

"More than likely they are not coming to us, but there are a number of shops on O'ahu where they are cash businesses," she said.

POLICE EXPLAIN THE LAW

Copper is fetching $1 to $2 a pound, depending on its quality, Tokuda said.

"There is great demand for the metal now, and prices are going up," she said. "It is becoming valuable now. A single piece of scrap can fetch you more than a few dollars, and people, unfortunately, are capitalizing on it."

In May, police began asking recyclers for copper items that appeared to be stolen.

"A lot of them are beginning to be stricter in how they do things," said Capt. Frank Fujii, a spokesman for the Honolulu Police Department. "Our officers are going to them and reminding them that they are not supposed to take stolen stuff, and if they do, they will be arrested."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.