The Boys and Girls Club of central Vancouver Island is running out of fuel to keep going; not only is their gasoline being siphoned and stolen, thieves seem to bypass every attempt to stop them.
The non profit’s executive director, Ian Kalina, said a van and two buses have repeatedly been targeted by thieves siphoning gas from the vehicles, and damaging them.
“We can’t fill them up with full gas tanks anymore because that’s just going to be feeding somebody else’s habits,” Kalina said.
“At times they would crawl under and cut gas lines and… my fear is that they’ll cause a spark and get hurt and worse things can happen.”
He said the charity has tried everything including putting in new fencing, installing locking gas caps and setting up security cameras.
But the fence was broken, the gas caps were destroyed and both of the security cameras were stolen, Kalina said.
“It’s a big cost to the organization to get the vehicles, let alone have to deal with the ongoing vandalism and theft that takes place,” added Kalina.
“A lot of the families here don’t have the means by which to pick their kids up from school so that’s what we do and that’s a very important service.”
Now the thefts seem to be more frequent, with 10 incidents in just the past three weeks, leaving the club desperate for a solution.
“When they clean out the gas tank completely… we’re not able to drive the vehicle so we’re having to find a sloppy sort of way to get kids off to school and keep things rolling.”
READ MORE: Good Samaritan helps replace cables stolen from Bright Nights display in Stanley Park
RCMP said the problem dates back several years, chalking it down to the location of the club and a lack of security measures in place.
“In the last year, there have been several dozen thefts and that’s alarming,” Cst. Gary O’Brien with Nanaimo RCMP said.
“There’s not a lot of eyes on the property, which is a problem for us, but if anybody has information, they need to call us and we need to put an end to this.”
O’Brien said they’re crimes of opportunity and Kalina is convinced it’s part of a much bigger problem.
“Whether it’s poverty, drug use, or homelessness, I’m not saying it’s any one of those things… it’s just that when people get desperate, they do things like this,” he said.
Kalina’s trying to find another more heavily trafficked area, like a local mall, to park the vehicles in hopes it’ll deter the thieves.
He’s also looking at holding some community forums so that others who’ve been hit in the same way can band together to try and come up with a solution together.
“What we end up doing is silently suffering, trying to endure the situation.”