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June 11, 2008

On Wire theft, Globelines Contractor and MERALCO Woes

It started at 12:30 Sunday morning when Butch and I woke up to darkness with the airconditioner turned off. Oh no a brownout! Peering down our bay window, I discovered that the rest of our neighborhood had lights in their homes. Maybe our circuit breaker tripped. No worries. I turned the main switch off then on. Nothing. No lights. Time to call MERALCO call center (16211) to rule out a problem with their power supply to our house. They arrived within an hour.

The MERALCO service guy removed our electric meter and showed us the smoking main line leading to our house. I didn’t need to see it. I could smell burnt rubber. They said they could do nothing about it since the problem is inside the house. To prove his point, he showed us the electric current coming from their line which was running fine. Great. Something is short-circuiting our main line. Luckily, we were able to sleep despite having no whirring electric fan to cool us.

Fortunately, our electrician arrived early the next day. He found the source of the short-circuit problem which was the main line leading from the electric meter to the wires just before the circuit breaker. That shouldn’t be a problem. We can replace it easily. Still puzzled, I could not figure out what would cause our main line to burn. Just then, a neighbor passed by “You have an electricity problem too?”

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