[Watch] Domestic Terror Attack on CA Power Substation Probable Terrorism Dry Run

Posted on 20 February, 2014 by Rick Wells

Last April 16^th, in the early morning hours just before 1am, an unknown person cut telephone cables inside an underground vault which services a nearby San Jose, CA electrical power substation.
Snipers soon opened fire on the substation itself, knocking out 17 transformers within 19 minutes. Those transformers funnel power to Silicon Valley. Just before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the dark and escaped.
No blackout occurred, as electric-grid officials were able to reroute power around the site, with other facilities taking up the slack. But the damage was done. It took 27 days for repairs to be completed and for the substation to be brought back online.
To date there have been no arrests or charges filed in what is being called by some a terrorist attack. Such an event, replicated across the country at multiple sites, could take down the power grid, causing a severe black out effecting millions of Americans.
Not much is being heard from those charged with protecting us from actual terrorism. They are instead labeling what took place as vandalism. The events and evidence indicate that is not the case.
One man who isn’t keeping silent on what happened is Jon Wellinghoff, at the time the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He called the attack, “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred.”
Wellinghoff has serious concerns that this was a prelude to something much larger and much more ominous, which could be in the works. He gave a closed-door, high-level briefing to federal agencies, Congress and the White House last year, with no response.
As time has passed, he has grown increasingly concerned and came forward out of concern that national security is at risk due to the vulnerable electricity grid.
An FBI spokesman stated the bureau’s position that they don’t believe it was an act of terrorism, while acknowledging that they are still sifting through evidence.
A former official at PG&E, the owner of “Metcalf,” the site in which the incident took place, told an industry gathering in November that he believes the incident was part of a preparation for an upcoming, larger event.
Mark Johnson, a retired vice president of transmission for PG&E, spoke at the security conference, expressing his belief that it was in fact a terrorist act. He said, “This wasn’t an incident where Billy-Bob and Joe decided, after a few brewskis, to come in and shoot up a substation. This was an event that was well thought out, well planned and they targeted certain components.”

PG&E is not talking. Their representative, Brian Swanson said, “We won’t speculate about the motives” of the attackers. He acknowledged that PG&E has ramped up their security measures.
A large part of the problem is vulnerability. Many of the system’s most important components are protected by little more than chain-link fences and surveillance cameras, in extremely remote locations.
Substations increase and decrease the voltage of electricity, permitting it to travel hundreds of miles on high-voltage lines and then be dropped down for delivery.
The nation is served by approximately 2,000 large transformers which are expensive to build, often millions of dollars each. They require extended lead times for purchase, as much as 18 months at current production levels. Each one is custom made and can weigh up to 500,000 pounds.
One company in Pittsburgh, PA, has a maximum production capacity of ten units per month. That is a common characteristic of the manufacturing environment, with only seven sources within the United States.
A 2009 Energy Department report said that “physical damage of certain system components (e.g. extra-high-voltage transformers) on a large scale…could result in prolonged outages, as procurement cycles for these components range from months to years.”
Mr. Wellinghoff reported on a FERC analysis which stated that a disabling a small number of U.S. substations could potentially blackout most of the U.S.
Others in agreement with Wellinghoff have proclaimed the Metcalf incident has elevated the discussion from the hypothetical to the real. Rick Lordan, a senior technical executive for the Electric Power Research Institute said, “The breadth and depth of the attack was unprecedented” in the U.S., and commented that it “appears to be preparation for an act of war.”
A chronological account of the attack from the Wall Street Journal is below:

US Power Grid Terrorist Attack Sparks Fears Of Blackout: http://youtu.be/2Xhi6gOD3wQ via @youtube

At 12:58 a.m., AT&T fiber-optic telecommunications cables were cut—in a way that made them hard to repair—in an underground vault near the substation, not far from U.S. Highway 101 just outside south San Jose. It would have taken more than one person to lift the metal vault cover, said people who visited the site.

Nine minutes later, some customers of Level 3 Communications, LVLT -1.54%  an Internet service provider, lost service. Cables in its vault near the Metcalf substation were also cut.

At 1:31 a.m., a surveillance camera pointed along a chain-link fence around the substation recorded a streak of light that investigators from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s office think was a signal from a waved flashlight. It was followed by the muzzle flash of rifles and sparks from bullets hitting the fence.

The substation’s cameras weren’t aimed outside its perimeter, where the attackers were. They shooters appear to have aimed at the transformers’ oil-filled cooling systems. These began to bleed oil, but didn’t explode, as the transformers probably would have done if hit in other areas.

About six minutes after the shooting started, PG&E confirms, it got an alarm from motion sensors at the substation, possibly from bullets grazing the fence, which is shown on video.

Four minutes later, at 1:41 a.m., the sheriff’s department received a 911 call about gunfire, sent by an engineer at a nearby power plant that still had phone service.

Riddled with bullet holes, the transformers leaked 52,000 gallons of oil, then overheated. The first bank of them crashed at 1:45 a.m., at which time PG&E’s control center about 90 miles north received an equipment-failure alarm.

Five minutes later, another apparent flashlight signal, caught on film, marked the end of the attack. More than 100 shell casings of the sort ejected by AK-47s were later found at the site.

At 1:51 a.m., law-enforcement officers arrived, but found everything quiet. Unable to get past the locked fence and seeing nothing suspicious, they left.

A PG&E worker, awakened by the utility’s control center at 2:03 a.m., arrived at 3:15 a.m. to survey the damage.

Shell casings found on the scene were free of fingerprints. There were small rock piles which could have been marks for prime shooting positions, according to Wellinghoff.
Rick Wells is a conservative Constitutionalist author who contributes to conservative media outlets. “Like” him on Facebook and “Follow” him on Twitter.



[Watch] Domestic Terror Attack on CA Power Substation Probable Terrorism Dry Run http://gopthedailydose.com/2014/02/20/watch-domestic-terror-attack-ca-power-substation-fits-terrorism-dry-run/