Oh wow! That's crazy! I'm almost surprised their house hasn't been condemned since it's so close to such a large drop-off...just imagine if there was an earthquake and the edge crumbled off or something!
I bet they had a 1000w MH lamp touching something!

The dummy didn't get that far to install MH lamps He was attempting to tap into the service entrance cable in the wall above the meter to do a power bypass and caused a short,the lights started flickering so I went out to look around to see what was going on and could hear this buzzing next door,I could see sparks in the window and smoke pouring out lol, it did that for a little while until the cutout for the distribution transformer blew. lol Then I called 911 lol.

Oh so you were still living in the since-demolished house? You just made me laugh out loud REALLY hard picturing that! I do hope no one got cooked in the process!
Oh so you guys do have the same emergency number in Canada? Interesting...never thought about that but it's good to know that in case something bad happens if I'm in Canada...
I can only imagine the 911 tape for that..."911 what is the nature of your emergency"..."There's smoke pouring out of my neighbor's electric meter!" I bet you clipped that one out of the police blotter for that day...

Yes that was quite awhile ago when that happened...about 1997 just after the place was sold and bought as an investment property, that was the first renter to move in there and in a week attempted a power bypass and failed lol.. If only I could have and my parents could have been able to afford that property then in 1997 it would be worth a lot today... yep 911 here in Canada too, the smoke was pouring out the upstairs bedroom window lol, must of cut through the drywall and cut though the metal conduit and cut the cable too lol.

Oh so you thought the house was on fire!
Am I the only one who finds some of those police blotter entries hilarious! (Although not as good as you just described)! That's usually how pot grow operations are caught; high electric bills!

LOL wow they really tried to run a feed separate of the meter?

Yeah probably ahead of the meter so they were less likely to be busted by having an abnormally high electric bill for a residential setting!

I think it was more so that they wouldn't get charged for all the electricity they were using rather than fear getting caught lol.

Or both!

I figured the way the sparks were flying and see the flash of the arcing lighting up the room from the window (starting to get dark) it was going to catch on fire lol I guess the guy left the room as there was nothing he could do lol.

"Quick, Bob!" Turn the breaker off! "Oh, wait...we can't do that, can we, Joe?" "It's ahead of the main breaker!"

Ok Bob get a bucket of water instead ZZAAAPP It's a good thing the cut-out on the pole blew when it did or that place would have been toast.

To his partner: " I swear I did everything right" "Aparently NOT!"

(As they're in the back of the police car being hauled away)
I bet some electrician was a very happy man though after that!

In the back of the car: "You hid the plants so when we get out we can regrow them, right?"

I can just imagine what the courtroom reaction to reading the charges for that one would have been!

They didn't get that far starting any plants yet. Just saw some large pots and soil. When the power company came to restore the power to the neighborhood he cut the power to the house, it was out for about 2 weeks by the time the electrician put in a new service mast and panel. Because of grow-ops the code now requires services to be visible on an outside wall to the meter base instead of running inside of the wall.

Ah My house has the line feed running down in conduit. I haven't really payed much attention to other peoples' houses though. It would make good sense though so thet way there's no live feed running inside the wall (and so it deters tampering lol)

Are existing installations grandfathered in though? In fact I originally pictured them doing that on the OUTSIDE of the house so of course the bypass would be visible...I pictured them messing around in the meter box.
Did the guys go to jail for intending to start a grow operation or not since they never got that far?
BTW it just occurred to me my profile pic is the ballast in the Sears light from that one house I salvaged stuff from.
I hope you don't mind I relate this story to electrician friends...they'll laugh really hard!

I pictured the guy on a ladder outside wearing voltage-proof gloves wrapping the wires of a stripped extension cord to the incoming feed and running the cord through a window but it makes more sense that they busted open the wall inside the house.