This crime is no stranfer to the news cycle. A fourth electrical substation was vandalized late on Christmas Day in Washington state. Homes in Kapowsin and Graham were temporarily without power according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office. The first substation was vandalized at about 5:30 a.m. Sunday, followed by a second substation, according to Tacoma Public Utilities. The outages affected about 7,300 customers in an area southeast of Tacoma. Just before noon, the utility had restored power to all but 2,700 customers whose power was estimated to be restored at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
The attacks come as federal officials are warning that the U.S. power grid needs better security to prevent domestic terrorism and after a large outage in North Carolina earlier this month that took days to repair. In all four cases, the sheriff’s office says someone forced their way into the fenced area surrounding the substations and damaged equipment to cause a power outage.
Power stations have been hit in Washington and Oregon in the last month. “It is unknown if there are any motives or if this was a coordinated attack on the power systems,” Tacoma sheriff’s department said in a statement. “There are no suspects in custody at this time.” “All law enforcement agencies in the county have been notified of the incidents and will be monitoring power substations in their area,” a statement reinforced.
The vandalism came amid a string of similar sabotage incidents across the country, including several in the Northwest, and follows a bulletin issued last month by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warning that critical infrastructure could be among the targets of possible attacks by “lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances.”
Earlier this month a federal memo stated, “Power stations in Oregon and Washington have reported physical attacks on substations using handtools, arson, firearms, and metal chains possibly in response to an online call for attacks on critical infrastructure.” The aim of attackers, it said, was ‘to cause widespread power failures with the potential impact of social disruption and violent anti-government criminal activity’.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a separate bulletin that critical infrastructure could be the target of terrorist attacks. Most of the consumers affected by outages in Washington had power restored by Sunday evening. Police are combing over surveillance video. Law enforcement agencies are now investigating at least eight attacks on power stations in four states in the past month that have underscored the vulnerability of the nation’s power grid. It remains unknown if they were connected.
