They did round up a group of the usual suspects.Posted on 02/06/2014 3:47:03 PM PST by Kartographer
Chances are you didn’t hear about it when it happened or the investigation that followed. Last April just outside of San Jose, California the grid system came under direct attack.
Investigators have yet to identify any suspects, but the attack seems to have been well planned. First, someone accessed an underground vault housing fiber optic telephone cables and cut off communications to a large PG&E Substation.
Then, for 19 minutes, someone opened fire from long-range.
The sniper apparently utilized 7.62x39mm rounds, such as those used in an AK-47, to target the oil-driven cooling systems for 17 large transformers. The shell casings found at the scene had been wiped clean of fingerprints. According to Newsmax none of the transformers exploded, but the damage was significant enough for PG&E to force their electricity feeds to reroute through another station in an effort to prevent a widespread blackout.
As of yet police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have no leads. The evidence suggests any number of scenarios with the highest likelihood being a coordinated attack involving a team. But because of its simplicity it’s possible that the attack could have been orchestrated by a lone individual.
Whatever the case, the event prompted the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Jon Wellinghoff to call it, “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred.”
(Excerpt) Read more at shtfplan.com ...
Well I actually read it in the hard copy newspaper so technically I’m not in violation of the FReeper code, LOL.
This wasn’t an incident where Billy-Bob and Joe decided, after a few brewskis, to come in and shoot up a substation,
” Mark Johnson, retired vice president of transmission for PG&E, told the utility security conference, according to a video of his presentation.
“This was an event that was well thought out, well planned and they targeted certain components.”
When reached, Mr. Johnson declined to comment further."
The country’s roughly 2,000 very large transformers are expensive to build, often costing millions of dollars each, and hard to replace.
Each is custom made and weighs up to 500,000 pounds, and “I can only build 10 units a month,” said Dennis Blake,
general manager of Pennsylvania Transformer in Pittsburgh, one of seven U.S. manufacturers. The utility industry keeps some spares on hand.
The FBI says the incident is still being investigated so they won’t label it as terrorism.
It happened almost ten months ago, why can’t they draw a line on who perpetuated the attack an their motivation?
On the other hand like the shooting at Ft. Hood, or the attack on our Benghazi mission, is the administration refusing to call it a terrorist attack
in an effort to hide its impotence in the War on Terror?
SOURCE :
http://beforeitsnews.com/r2/?url=http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2014/02/why-is-april-2013-attack-on-calif-power.html
The attack occurred April 16, 2013, and we are just hearing about it now ! Why not earlier ?
“The shell casings found at the scene had been wiped clean of fingerprints. “
Bad logic. If the bad guys picked up the brass, they’d take it along, rather than wipe it and leave it. I think they mean they didn’t find prints.
Or, they used a different round and left wiped AK rounds as diversion.
I think Communications Workers of America were.
Along with more muslim terrorists as refugees as reported by foxnews.com I have never despised anyone as much as this POS president.
I would bet on the domestic Left for this one, the envirowacks or the like.
I am very doubtful they wouldn’t have used guns.
Hypothetically speaking, not endorsing or encouraging, thermite would be even simpler. No noise, just toss the bag onto a sub station, transformer, whatever and drive, walk, ride a bike away. By the time the fuse lit the thermite you`d be miles away.
Think like a crazy goon terrorist and it`ll scare you to realize there`s really nothing that can be done to stop it.
Jun 4, 2013 - New surveillance video from the PG&E substation on Metcalf Road. The video shows bullets hitting the fence causing sparks. The sparks can bee seen at minutes: 1:54, 2:07, 2:10, 2:57 and 3:01. We are asking anyone with any information on this incident or the AT&T fiber optic cable being cut to contact the Sheriff's Office at 408-808-4431 or email so.website@sheriff.sccgov.org. AT&T has offered a reward of $250,000 for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible.
Other sources referred to the manhole covers over the fiber optic cable access points as steel vault covers requiring two people to remove. Another largely unreported item concerned discovery of piles of rocks at different locations outside the substation which were guessed to have been placed in advance to mark firing positions.
Then there's this:
SUSPICIOUS MAN SPOTTED AT PG&E SUBSTATION THAT WAS VANDALIZED IN APRIL - May 22, 2013 - BayAreaNewsTalk.com
A suspicious man fled early this morning after he was spotted in a field near a PG&E transmission substation that was damaged by gunfire in a vandalism case last month, a Santa Clara County sheriff’s spokesman said.
A security guard with a flashlight saw the man standing in an open field off of Coyote Rancho Road, near the utility’s substation in the 100 block of Metcalf Road, at abut 3 a.m., sheriff’s Deputy Kurtis Stenderup said.
The suspect, described as a white man dressed in black clothing, ran away down Metcalf Road, Stenderup said.
The guard called the sheriff’s office, which dispatched eight units and set up a perimeter but was not able to locate the man, Stenderup said...
Happened in April 2013 and no suspects? Sounds like these “investigators” couldn’t find their butt with both hands.
They did round up a group of the usual suspects.The substation was back up in less than a month. All of the equipment is normally available as spares.
* * *
I read the entire WSJ article last night and I don’t feel a bit calm. Yes, the substation was up in less than a month, but they had to do substantial rerouting around it. Had several substations been taken out at the same time, it would probably have resulted in a widespread blackout. If you had enough people to do this across the U.S. at the same time, it would take a loooooong time to get it all back up again. As for the parts, the WSJ article stated that while they have a *few* extras, they don’t have many, and it takes quite some time to manufacture more.
That WSJ article makes clear what a well-planned - and thoroughly - that attack on the system was. Good, if frightening, read.
While we didn't hear about the attack, I'm sure utilities knew about it soon after. Substations are instrumented. The article mentions the phone lines. Natural gas utilities used radio to monitor facilities in the 1950s.
What do you think happened after that attack? You and I don't know. I can't imagine the utility executives are sitting around twiddling their thumbs. If I was a utility CEO, I would already have a report that evaluated the vulnerability of substations along with recommendations and priorities. One of which would be remote sensing of another attack.
I suspect another attack may not go as smoothly for the perpetrators as the one we finally heard about. The news blackout was probably designed to prevent copy cats and possibly encourage another attack. While the attackers tried to cover their tracks, I would be surprised if the FBI isn't following up on every piece of evidence including looking at video from every available source in that area.
There are probably protocols in place via the fusion centers to process the next crime scene. Some of the substations may have been set up as traps. Meaning things are in place to at least snag more evidence next time.
Fusion centers collect an amazing amount of information across the country and then correlate it. Now that an attack has occurred, the “system” is primed to collect information that in the past may have been ignored or more likely not recognized for its relevance. Many of this country's first responders have been briefed on the fusion centers. The rules of the ballgame changed whether the general public knows or not.
Didn’t Coulson write about this? He, not sure I have the name right, wrote a book in the 70s or 80s about how vulnerable our infrastructure was. Electric, gas, commo, transportation.
And since then I have seen ONE substation surrounded by tall Jersey barriers, just one.
My money is on Lance and Ivy Enviroweenies.
Coordinated teams across the country striking in the same time frame...bad news all around.
How many AKs and ammo could you buy compared to the Barrett. And how much harder would it be to buy just one Barrett on the street compared to multiple AK’s?
There's the rub. But I am unfamiliar with the procurement logistics for the M82. But it would represent a force projection orders of magnitude higher than the AK or a variant.
That might make it a worthwhile endeavor given the target.
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