An unidentified person or persons stole and damaged antennas and other Anatahan monitoring devices at the old Emergency Management Office Building on Capital Hill, the Department of Public Safety said yesterday.<\/p>\n
DPS spokesperson Lei Ogumoro said that, on Tuesday at 12:29pm, police received a report about a criminal mischief incident at the old EMO-Division of Land Registration and Survey Building.<\/p>\n
Preliminary investigation showed that an antenna transmitter, receiver antenna, and the transmitter to the EMO base had been tampered with.<\/p>\n
All these communication equipment are located at the top of the old EMO Building.<\/p>\n
Ogumoro said that during further investigation, police found that a stainless steel box had been stolen.<\/p>\n
The DPS spokesperson said that, according to an EMO staff, the antennas and the steel box are used to monitor the active Anatahan Volcano.<\/p>\n
Ogumoro said the building was last secured on March 5.<\/p>\n
EMO acting director Mark Pangelinan told Saipan Tribune yesterday that the stainless steel box and antennas are very expensive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stainless steel box, that\u2019s where we transmit and receive the data,\u201d Pangelinan said.<\/p>\n
He said unidentified person or persons stole some parts and equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome antennas were stolen, some were left but they are crooked, bended. Somebody decided to play kung fu,\u201d the director said.<\/p>\n
He said that EMO\u2019s seismic technicians are currently fixing the monitoring equipment with the help of the Alaska Volcano Observatory.<\/p>\n
Pangelinan said they are now relocating those antennas and transmitters to the current EMO building on Capital Hill.<\/p>\n
EMO installed those equipment on the rooftop of the old EMO building because the place has a clear site of Anatahan.<\/p>\n
He said the Alaska Volcano Observatory is assisting EMO through e-mails and telephone to repair the communication devices.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make sure that technically we\u2019re doing it right,\u201d Pangelinan said.<\/p>\n
He warned that the person or persons who did it have committed a federal offense.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease think about it and make sure that they don\u2019t do it again because those are federal funds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said the Federal Bureau of Investigation may likely coordinate with DPS because those devices were bought using federal money.<\/p>\n
This was the first time that the monitoring equipment were stolen and tampered with. <\/p>\n
A couple of years ago, emergency kits and tools were stolen from the storage room at the same building. No one was arrested in that burglary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An unidentified person or persons stole and damaged antennas and other Anatahan monitoring devices at the old Emergency Management Office Building on Capital Hill, the Department of Public Safety said yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}