Hey Nige
That's a regular occurance where I work in the north east. As a chemical plant, we have miles of thick copper cored cables running through pipe trenches along side residential estates. The silly sods light fires at each end of a run of cable & burn thru the outer coating, then hacksaw the cable hoping that the fire has tripped the switch house fuses. they wrap the hacksaw's in thick 'gaffer' tape as protection as we have found hacksaw's burned up, but as yet, no bodies
Just show's you what some people will do for a quick buck