Day after Christmas, 1997, almost all of Western Washington was his with an ice and sleet storm then had a couple feet of snow dropped on top of that. I watched a tree branch take out the power line in front of my house. Within 48 hours, every house in my neighborhood had power except 7 houses around mine. It took 8 days before a power company truck showed up to fix power line in front of my house. The truck and employees were from Missoula, Montana, they were among repair crews from 7 states that came to help. Typical repairs in situations like this start with the biggest areas of outages then they work their way down. Some single house outages took a couple weeks to repair. Thankfully the generosity of neighbors with power and a lot of extension cords made that experience bearable.
I believe he lives in a very red area, and is appealing to a group who would respond favorably to his type of delivery. Video does provide a more human interaction, too, and that can be more appealing and soothing to those who find mere text off putting. In other words, this works with his audience, who are right leaning, but not extreme, and possibly lacking the time to watch Frontline etc. I enjoy his videos if only to hear a basic breakdown, then I will move on, and read or watch more complex stuff. He reminds me, also, of people I know here in MO, so I don’t mind his style.
I am not an expert on power transmission (OK, I have had a couple of non-major Electrical Engineering courses when I obtained my Engineering BS 40 years ago), and I have not researched exactly how these power plants were damaged, but what has been reported makes me think this wasn’t someone taking pot-shots at a sub-station.
One, the power is still out. To me, that suggests that the transformers themselves have to be replaced, not merely repaired. From my understanding, these things have a multitude of failsafes built-in so they will shut themselves off before they destroy themselves. Overload/Underload, Overtemperature/Undertemperature, Frequency imbalance, phase imbalance, among others. Again, I am not an expert, but my experience in how things are designed, in general, tells me that a couple of shots at the broad side of a barn from a half-mile away isn’t going to have a high probability of knocking them out.
Two, it’s been reported that whoever did this “knew what they were doing.” This, to me anyway, strongly suggests what happened is exactly what the perpetrators wanted to have happen. Yeah, maybe they just got “lucky” and happen to hit vital components that prevented automatic shutdown to occur. At two separate locations. Perhaps even in the same way.
Yeah, maybe these guys just knew enough to be dangerous and knocking out all power for 40,000 people in the middle of December for a week or so wasn’t their plan. Maybe they were just stupid. Except, if they were that stupid, I’d expect them to have been caught by now.
That they haven’t been caught yet concerns me, as it suggests some higher level thinking than just “Hey, Bubba, let’s grab our rifles and knock out the power so those Groomers can’t have their little Drag Show! That’ll show 'em.”
I didn’t say it was pot shots, I just said that it wouldn’t require the sort of aim required to kill a person. When someone talks about making a shot from 1000 yds, they are usually talking about hitting a target barely a foot across.
A high powered bullet into one of those things is not going to be something that can be repaired on site. Multiple punctures through both the container holding the oil as well as damage to the wires used to wrap the transformer isn’t something that can be easily fixed.
Looking at various pictures, I’ll admit that “broad side of the barn” is a bit of hyperbole, and it’s more like “door of a barn” sized.
Point is, is that someone without exceptional skill would be able to hit vital components from far enough away as to not be on any sort of camera protecting the substation.
We also don’t know that they only took a couple of shots. They may have taken dozens or hundreds.
Yeah, they wanted the power to go out, and so they shot at the things that made the power stay on. I don’t know that much about electrical substations either, but I can tell you what the transformer is.
Where have you seen anything about an automatic shutdown not occuring is the reason for the damage? My understanding was that the damage was the reason for the damage.
I’ve seen transformers on poles blow up. There is no automatic shutdown to protect it, it just explodes in a shower of light and sound.
The automatic shutdown is to protect up and down stream components from a faulty transformer, it’s not meant to protect that transformer from being further damaged after acquiring holes it was not designed to have.
Without catching them, hard to say, but it’s possible they didn’t realize how hard it would be to fix the damage that they did, or it’s possible they did know and didn’t care.
It doesn’t suggest any more higher thinking than, “Oh, they might have cameras around that substation. Let’s take the shot from up here where they won’t see us.”
They have recovered “dozens” of shell casings from the sites. That suggests more than just “pot shots” to me. The story I read also made reference to rapid fire, so they were either heard in the act or the pattern of casings is such to lead them to that belief.
Looks like they expect to have everyone’s power back on by midnight tonight, so that’s good for those still without power, at least.
I’ll definitely be following the story as details are revealed. I don’t know enough about how the technology works to know if these two particular transformers being targeted was more damaging than any other two, and that’s something important to know when trying to suss out what’s what.
I suspect it’s just morons, but could it be foreign actors testing the strength/resiliency of the US power grid?
I’d like to know what the shell casings where from. What caliber etc.
Regardless, whomever did this has 40,000 people very angry at them.
In the meantime, I found out that people who investigated and repaired the grid after the 2013 San Jose incident found little pyramids of rocks in front of certain critical structures, which suggested an inside job of some kind, and never found any fingerprints that didn’t belong to employees. AFAIK, they’ve never had any viable suspects.
I might be getting my firearm terminology mixed up, but aren’t “casings” the bits you find at the location of the shooter, not at the location of the target? If they’ve found those, then they know where the shooters were, it was presumably close range, and they know what cameras would have been watching that spot.
Putting a bullet through a transformer would probably do it, though, even without a degree.
The kinetic energy of a high-powered rifle round is impressive. I have a 7mm Remington Magnum, which is on the low end of high-powered, and you would need 1/2" plate to stop it, and it would still dent. Most machinery casing is 1/8" or less. Why would you make it thicker? Just heavier and more expensive. A lot cheaper to put CMU walls around the facility. The 7mm will fragment a CMU but its energy is gone.
Now there’s a reward:
Maybe this, combined with what must be a substantial loss of holiday food, will make someone eager to talk.
Providing the reporting is correct, the casing is the brass part of a round, that is ejected after the actual projectile (bullet) is fired out of the gun. The casing (brass) would stay within about 10 feet of where it was ejected from the firearm. Unless you pick them up.
The casing/brass would tell you what type of ammo was used. And with forensics, might even be able to be able to be matched to the gun that fired it. Provided you had the gun.
Maybe they did, and it didn’t catch everything?
To each their own, but I think the value of what Beau has to say is worth 6 minutes of my time.
What are the odds that the perps removed all of their fingerprints from every casing before they loaded their guns?
Fingerprints will tell the cops who handled the ammo (giving them an address to visit), and then forensics will match the rounds to the gun. If the ammo handler and gun owner are one and the same, that person’s gonna have some explaining to do. I feel like this will all be solved very soon, especially since the news recently reported that search warrants had been issued (i.e. the feds must know at this point where they want to search).
I don’t put much faith in the Daily Fail, but today it has an article claiming five electricity substations in Oregon and Washington are attacked just days after two in North Carolina were shot up causing widespread power outages.
Portland’s Fox affiliate confirms some had been hit.
Think it’s copycats already getting started?