Attacks on the Power Grid

[China]

 

[China]

2 men charged in connection to attacks on Pierce County substations

 

Two Puyallup men were arrested Saturday in connection to attacks on four Pierce County power substations over the Christmas holiday.

 

Matthew Greenwood, 32, and Jeremy Crahan, 40 appeared in court Tuesday on charges of conspiracy to damage energy facilities. Greenwood also faces a charge of possession of an unregistered firearm If convicted, the two men could face up to 20 - 30 years in prison.

 

Prosecutors are asking they remain at the Federal Detention Center at SeaTac pending future hearings.

 

The attacks cut power to thousands, caused at least $3 million in damage, and will take 36 months to repair.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Gunfire damages North Carolina substation, no outage caused

 

A North Carolina utility says that an electricity substation has been damaged by gunfire but that it caused no outages.

 

The damage reported Tuesday comes after a December gunfire attack on multiple substations in Moore County that knocked out power to more than 45,000 customers.

 

EnergyUnited said in a news release that an alarm early Tuesday alerted it to an equipment problem at the substation in Randolph County north of Charlotte.

 

It said that crews found damage to the substation from an apparent gunshot and that law enforcement was notified. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Gonna have to start surrounding these things with kevlar or something just to prevent against accidental gunfire.

 

[Larry]

18 minutes ago, China said:

Gonna have to start surrounding these things with kevlar or something just to prevent against accidental gunfire.

Only way to stop it is a good substation with a gun. 
 

 

[Bang]

Works for me. 

~Brrratatat-tat!

[China]

FBI warned of neo-Nazi plots as attacks on Northwest grid spiked

 

As a string of attacks on electrical substations unfolded in Oregon and Washington in 2022, the FBI was warning utilities of white supremacists’ plots to take down the nation’s power grid. A KUOW/OPB investigation reveals the scope of the threat to the Northwest grid.

 

A white pickup truck with a rack of roof lights blazing pulled up to an electrical substation in the small town of Morton, Washington, about 70 miles south of Seattle, on June 16. In the predawn dark next to the city cemetery, a man in a dark hoodie and baseball cap hopped out of the truck. He broke a steel gate apart, likely with a crowbar later found at the scene, and walked inside the fenced facility, on his way to sabotaging its high-voltage transformers.

 

Electrical substations transform high-voltage electricity to the lower voltages that keep America’s lights on, its food cold, its medical devices operating, and its phones charged. Far-flung substations can be difficult to secure. Damaging even a single one can shut off critical services to thousands of people.

 

Attacks like the one in Morton are on the rise in the Northwest: There have been 15 since June, more than in the previous six years combined. The recent attacks make this region a hotspot for such activity, according to a joint investigation by KUOW and Oregon Public Broadcasting. In most cases, the motives aren’t known. But as the FBI and extremism researchers have noted, neo-Nazis have been calling for just such attacks.

 

“The individuals of concern believe that an attack on electrical infrastructure will contribute to their ideological goal of causing societal collapse and a subsequent race war in the United States,” according to an FBI memo obtained by KUOW and OPB.

 

The substation in Morton that was attacked in June is connected to transmission lines that deliver hydropower from the Cowlitz Falls Dam. The energy coursing through those lines is more than 500 times the voltage that comes out of light sockets or power outlets and, experts say, is easily lethal to anyone foolish enough to mess around with it.

 

Despite the danger, the Morton substation intruder entered the facility and deliberately damaged equipment. (To avoid inspiring copycat crimes, KUOW and OPB are omitting details of techniques used in this attack and others).

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[skinsmarydu]

[Captain Wiggles]

Shocker. 🤭

 

ANTIFA hasn't been a thing for like two decades at this point. Gone the way of the dodo or MySpace or Braniff Airways. 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Captain Wiggles

[Bang]

Don't go dragging the good people of Braniff into this.

 

~Buzz

[TheGreatBuzz]

1 hour ago, Bang said:

Don't go dragging the good people of Braniff into this.

 

~Buzz

 

I assume there is a joke here that I'm not getting.

[Bang]

1 hour ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

 

I assume there is a joke here that I'm not getting.

Nothing really. Just absurdity for the sake of it.

 

~Boing

[China]

1 minute ago, Bang said:

Nothing really. Just absurdity for the sake of it.

 

~Boing

 

Shouldn't that be Boeing? Since you were talking about Braniff.

[China]

@TheGreatBuzz posted about this in the Civil War Lite thread...

 

Violent Extremists Are Planning to Attack Power Stations, DHS Warns

 

Domestic violent extremists have in the last year increasingly shared tactics with each other on using guns to attack electric power stations in a move that likely escalates the threat to US critical infrastructure, according to a Department of Homeland Security bulletin obtained by CNN.

 

Following multiple high-profile attacks on US power substations last year, extremists have stepped up sharing of "online messaging and operational guidance promoting attacks against this sector," says the DHS bulletin, which was distributed to US critical infrastructure operators on Monday.

 

The information and tactics shared by extremists online include "detailed diagrams, simplified tips for enhancing operational security, and procedures for disabling key components of substations and transformers," DHS warned.

 

The last year saw a flurry of physical attacks and vandalism on US electric infrastructure.

 

Tens of thousands of people lost power in Moore County, North Carolina, in December after Duke Energy substations were damaged by gunfire. On Christmas, thousands of people lost power in a Washington county after someone vandalized multiple substations there.

 

A DHS spokesperson told CNN in a statement: "The Department of Homeland Security regularly shares information regarding the heightened threat environment with federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial officials to ensure the safety and security of all communities across the country."

 

Some of the threats to electric infrastructure have come from people espousing racially or ethnically motivated extremist ideology "to create civil disorder and inspire further violence," the FBI previously said in a November bulletin sent to private industry.

 

In the months since the FBI analysis, concerns from the federal officials about the threat appear to have grown more acute.

 

In the intelligence bulletin distributed Monday, DHS officials expressed concern that gun attacks "could become more appealing and spread to other infrastructure sectors" because they are a "low-risk" and "high-reward opportunity" and because attacks on the electric sector can impact other sectors.

 

Major US electric utilities routinely drill for such attacks, and the uptick in activity over the last year has only heightened the vigilance in the sector.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

Maybe the Feds look into some kind of rapid response team, to aid recovery from such things?  
 

Or do the utilities already have things like that in place?  I'm thinking things you read about, like thousands of utility workers heading to places in anticipation of a hurricane, for example. 

[China]

Neo-Nazi Marine Corps vet accused of plotting terror attack possessed classified military materials: sources

 

A neo-Nazi Marine Corps veteran jailed for allegedly plotting to attack the power grid and commit acts of racial terror stands accused by the government of possessing classified Defense Department materials on a computer drive at the time of his arrest, Raw Story has exclusively learned.

 

The nature of the classified materials found on Jordan Duncan’s hard drive upon his arrest in Idaho in October 2020 is unclear. The government has not described the contents of the materials, which were found amid a tranche of documents about chemicals and bomb-making, or provided any explanation about how Duncan allegedly obtained them.

 

But the revelation about apparent classified materials in the possession of Duncan, as alleged by the government in a court filing, adds an explosive new dimension to the federal case against him — as the nation’s defense apparatus continues to reel from a separate classified document leak allegedly committed by a National Guard airman.

 

It also comes amid previously reported details of Duncan’s role in an alleged neo-Nazi plot to target power substations and carry out a campaign of racial violence. Duncan’s background as a Russian linguist trained by the Marine Corps in electronic communications raises the provocative question — yet unanswered — about whether he passed on classified information to a foreign government or otherwise used it to harm the United States by advancing an agenda to promote social discord and undermine democracy.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Growing U.S. anger with electric utilities finds its epicenter in Maine

 

Last December, Ellen McCurley was settling into a calm new life, savoring sunsets from the porch of a modest riverfront home with her dogs Sadie and Maisie, when a notice from the electric company turned it all upside down.

 

It was a nearly $1,000 bill from Central Maine Power, more than quadruple what she paid the month before. And the bills kept soaring, topping out at $1,200 by the end of March. She was sure it was a mistake but couldn’t get the company to reduce the charges.

 

“I would call them and say: ‘This is not possible. Can you help me solve this?’” recalled the 64-year-old social worker, who shared copies of her bills with The Washington Post. “I felt like I was going crazy.”

 

So McCurley began working to drive her power company out of business, joining a burgeoning national movement of consumers frustrated with power companies that they feel are unaccountable to ratepayers, and that have taken center stage in disasters such as this summer’s devastating wildfires in Maui.

 

The epicenter of the resistance is in Maine, where voters — who have wrangled with outages, billing mishaps and some of the highest electricity prices in the country — are joining a campaign to replace the state’s investor-owned electricity companies with a nonprofit utility. The campaign has drawn a coalition of the frustrated that cuts across ideological lines, including fed-up ratepayers and climate activists accusing the utilities of slow-walking the transition away from fossil fuels.

 

A ballot measure Mainers will decide on Tuesday calls for a hostile takeover of sorts, creating a nonprofit company called Pine Tree Power that would seize control of the state’s electricity grid from Central Maine Power and Versant Power, the subsidiaries of multinational corporations that now own it. The shoestring campaign is an existential threat to the industry, moving the Maine utilities to spend more than $35 million blitzing ratepayers with ads warning that the measure threatens to create massive public debt, unending legal fights and soaring bills for customers.

 

However things play out on Election Day, the Maine campaign is a sign of what utilities nationwide increasingly face as consumer frustration boils over. The companies are under more stress than at any time in recent memory, forced to respond to a confluence of events that demand nimble action while operating under a dated financial and regulatory model.

 

Extreme weather events are creating unprecedented reliability and public safety risks. The push to power cars and — in many parts of the country — all major home appliances with electricity is creating huge new demand. Spiking energy prices have sent rates in many parts of the country spiraling up.

 

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