Snipers Coordinated an Attack on the Power Grid, but Why?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/snipers-coordinated-an-attack-on-the-power-grid-but-why/283620/


The location of PG&E's Metcalf Transmission Substation is marked with "A" (Google)

Last April, unknown attackers shot up 17 transformers at a California substation in what the then-chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Jon Wellinghoff called "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred" in this country.

Though news reports about the incident at the Metcalf transmission facility came out in April, The Wall Street Journal just pieced together the larger story of the attack together from regulatory filings and outside reporting.

Various power-grid facilities are vandalized or damaged regularly, but the details of this particular attack are startling.

Before the attackers opened fire on the transformers, fiber optic lines running nearby were cut.

[Octafish]

1. A professional job?

Rather than a diversion, maybe it was to see how the professionals reacted.

[FSogol]

2. Training. They now know what to hit. n/t

[TBF]

3. Trial run would be my guess as well. nt

[Tanuki]

4. As I mentioned on another thread, one week later there was an armed attack on a TVA

nuclear power facility, and it also remains unsolved. I wonder if the two events are related?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-investigate-weekend-shooting-at-tenn-nuclear-plant/

[Ghost in the Machine]

7. That happened about 5 miles from my house. They still haven't caught the guy, and have no suspects..

I always thought it was someone there trying to poach a deer, as there are some BIG ones that take refuge on the Plant property there. The guard was in an area outside his normal patrol zone, and the only reason he was in the area was to take a leak, instead of driving all the way across the Plant site to the bathrooms at the guard shack.

Just my 2 cents worth....

Peace,

Ghost

[Tanuki]

11. I'd be afraid that the venison would be radioactive! n/t

[Ghost in the Machine]

12. I don't think that is a concern, but we don't eat fish from the lake or river, due to mercury

concerns and because of the coal ash spill upstream in Kingston a couple of years ago...

Peace,

Ghost

[MindPilot]

5. This is what DHS _should_ be doing.

We in Socal learned a few years ago just how delicate the power grid is when something broke in AZ and everyone from South OC to Northern Mexico was in the dark for 12 hours.

Terrorists don't need elaborate conspiracies and military expertise. A guy with a car and a pack of matches could do a lot of damage here in the bone-dry west.

Our infrastructure for the most part is wide open to both physical and cyber attack.

[90-percent]

6. Rachel

Rachel covered this last night.

I wonder how many more Constitutional Rights we all will have to cede once they pull it off for real?

It does look like they know what they're doing!

-90% Jimmy

[phantom power]

8. As I understand it, we literally have no replacement transformers >= 250 kilovolts.

Replacing even one very large transformer of that class would take many weeks. A coordinated attack on many large substations could leave a city without electricity for a long time.

[Rex]

9. Sniper ELFs?

[NuclearDem]

10. Keebler goes paramilitary.