Power Struggles
“Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.” - Mark 13:33
On April 16, 2013, a dangerous act of sabotage that most folks have never heard about took place in Metcalf, California. Under the cover of darkness, at least two snipers took a position about thirty or forty yards away from its target - a power substation for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). After receiving a signal by flashlight, the shooters began firing their high-powered rifles in a coordinated attack that would damage seventeen large power transformers. Remarkably, the shooters knew exactly where to aim, targeting the units’ oil-filled cooling systems, which would slowly drain out due to the damage and cause a power failure. Moments before the police arrived to investigate, there was another signal by flashlight; the shooting stopped, and the perpetrators were never caught. It took PG&E twenty-seven days to repair the damage. (1)
When the damage was discovered, PG&E called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to investigate. Jon Wellinghoff, who was then the chairman of the commission, was immediately alarmed by what he learned. He and his investigators walked the grounds where the attack transpired. He asked his men, “What do you think happened?” They replied, “Somebody put together a very carefully planned and very precisely executed attack on the substation. We don’t know who they are, but they were very highly trained.” (2)
Just months before the attack, Wellinghoff had ordered an analysis of the American power grid to find potential vulnerabilities. What the study found was quite alarming. “We came up with some very astounding numbers,” Wellinghoff recounted. The analysis found that if someone knocked out just nine critical substations in the Western, Eastern, and Texas Interconnections, they could potentially black out the entire United States. He estimates that such a blackout could last eighteen months or longer. (3)
