Power Outages

We have had a number of power outages lately.  The one that kicked it off was at the beginning of October.  Jason was working and the girls and I had gone to a friends house for the afternoon.  When we arrived home most of the power in the house was out.  We had randowm power....the livingroom lights, the cooktop and the fridge in the kitchen.  I went to the fuse box and checked everything and everything seemed in order.  Just for good measure I flipped all the switches and flipped them back on but that did nothing.  I went to our main power switch outside and flipped it off and on but that did nothing.  I then called the landlord.  They came out to the house and did all the things I had done to no avail.  She called the electrician who said he could come but wouldn't be able to come until around 8:30pm.  I said that was fine so our landlords left and I waited for them to come back at 8:30pm.  Well, the electrician was running behind and he eventually came around 11pm.  He looked at the fuse box, checked all the switches and then went outside to the main box.  Now, there are two boxes outside.  One that houses the main power switch and then abother box.  I have never been in the other box and don't know what it does but fortunately the electrician does. He opened that box and found that apparently during the day someone had come and stolen a piece out of the box which caused our power outage!  I couldn't believe this had happened!  Who steals pieces out of electrical boxes??!!  Since this power outage I am much more sensitive to any outage.  Whenever the power goes out I immediately run outside to see if anyone is stealing anything from our electrical box!  Fortunately, the recent outages haven't been for theft.  We had a pipe of some sort break in the basement which left us without water for a day which also tripped the breaker.  It took us a while of hunting before we went down into the basement and saw the water on the floor.  We called the landlord and had that fixed.  Our latest outage has to somehow do with the fan for our woodstove.  I'm not really sure what the problem is but the boiler guy was here today and he said it was an electrical problem and that the electrician will come.  We shall see what he says but I don't have high hopes.  My guess is that there is some clog in the pipe somewhere but who knows.  I will wait and see what happens.