Posted on 02/05/2014 11:14:10 AM PST by yoe
Although the fact that the still-unsolved attack on a power station near San Jose occurred just a handful of hours after the Boston Marathon bombing — and apparently raised a few eyebrows initially — its ride in the public eye has been decidedly under the radar to date.
[snip]Here’s what went down: Around 1 a.m. on April 16, two manholes were entered and fiber cables cut around the PG&E Metcalf substation, which killed some local 911 services, landline service to the substation, and cell phone service in the area, a senior U.S. intelligence official told Foreign Policy.
More from Foreign Policy:
The intruder(s) then fired more than 100 rounds from what two officials described as a high-powered rifle at several transformers in the facility. Ten transformers were damaged in one area of the facility, and three transformer banks — or groups of transformers — were hit in another, according to a PG&E spokesman.
Cooling oil then leaked from a transformer bank, causing the transformers to overheat and shut down. State regulators urged customers in the area to conserve energy over the following days, but there was no long-term damage reported at the facility and there were no major power outages. There were no injuries reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
Notice the date on the Blaze article.......Obama is much closer to his desired level playing of field for America.
Let’s speculate and fill the void!
No.
A) Obama preparing marshal law
B) Sent in by China
FBI standard denial of terrorism...(sigh)
I liked the metal sheet idea to block visibility. Electrify that puppy too. Make it harder and more time consuming for such an attack to happen.
There is little doubt that this was a terrorist attack. Obummer doesn’t care. He is too busy destroying the country.
The Journal article today was very important, I thought. I hope it gets the attention of somebody somewhere who cares about the US. It’s interesting that the main source for the article was not supposed to be talking about it, but felt that he had to go public to get any attention paid to it (outside of limited tech circles).
I know it’s an old article but it’s a good reminder to not get to comfy.
If they ever do “get serious” then you better be sure to have plenty of…..
Kerosene.
Kerosene lamps
Candles.
Dry food
Water.
Guns
Ammo
If it happens to be winter ….. then add
Propane or firewood.
Because it’s going to be a long drawn out ordeal.
spontaneous youtube event, right?
It seems like an awful lot of trouble to take a substation down.
Must be really difficult to hurt the equipment.
Seems like a pretty low-tech way to take down a power station.
KYPD
I would say it was more of a real world test to see what equipment the ammo could penetrate/break, and how the equipment would react. How fast the oil drains out and the like. Like a cat playing with a mouse to hone it’s ability to attack.
Taking into account the likely persuasion of the people doing it I would say they probably used AK47s with steel core AP ammo. Or they may have even used a variety of ammo to see which was most effective.
And the other thing I would say they are keeping an eye on is how long it took the company to affect the repairs. Like how much work the company had to do to repair equipment, and how long, or if they had to replace it outright depending on the damage.
I would also speculate that they intentionally damaged some equipment more than other equipment, or in different ways to see how much damage they had to do to make the repairs take as long as possible, or make repairs impossible.
I live up the road from where this happened. Similar events have happened before in the same area. It’s always thugs from Verizon/SBC-Pac Bell-AT&T/PG&E unions causing trouble. They go out there because it’s very quiet with minmum police patrols.
“an unprecedented and sophisticated attack on an electric grid substation with military-style weapons”
His he talking about the wire cutters used to cut the fiber optic cables or the hunting rifle used to poke a few holes in some transformers?
He is talking about the combination of both.
The fiber cut took out control communications of the substation, along with the actual physical destruction.
When they equipment started to fail from the destruction the power company couldn’t automatically take it off line because the power company no longer had control over it from the control center.
The people had to have information as to what manholes the substation communications link was routed through.
And they had to know the identifying marks the fiber cables had that differentiated them from other utility and power cables that could have killed them if they tried to cut them.
This “operation” sounds like a book on my Kindle - “Gridlock”. A terrorist/assassin used a rifle to take out some insulators as a small substation in North Dakota. This was the first attack to take out the entire grid. He wanted to make this first attack serious, so he waited until a lineman came to climb up and do his work, then he shot and killed him. Then, bad guy went away.
It appears some think this California Power Station is a dress rehearsal for “much larger assault on US grid.” Well, that is the way it started in this book.
That would be an extreme psychological multiplier in such a prolonged attack. If the repair crews could not be freely dispatched to damaged locations for fear of snipers waiting for them when they arrive, then it would grind repair work to a halt. A simple cut pole in the middle of a field would turn into a potential kill zone for a utility crew that came to fix it. The attackers would own the night.
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