Attacks on two power substations in NC left 45,000 people without power. Some no-good pieces of crap shot equipment at the substations and it will take until Thursday to get it all repaired. Meanwhile people who need electricity for medicinal purposes and to keep warm are suffering. Temps were below freezing for 7 hours last night. I hope they catch the pieces of crap who did this and put them in prison for 50 years. I wish we still had chain gangs so they would have to work in the freezing cold and the burning sun. If they can do this much damage with rifles, it also calls into question how safe is our power grid. 'Targeted' gunfire caused NC blackout (wral.com)
That's pretty much what I've read from folks who live in that region. But they should still be used a Live Test Dummies. Let them go when they can tell the difference between 220v and 110v by using their tongues.
I just hear that it would only take a few of these attacks to take the entire grid down. One expert said it would only take 8 or 9 substations to go down to take 1/3 of the U.S. offline. Another said 20. They claim it could cause a domino outage in one of the three grids--East, West, or Texas. They disregarded Alaska and Hawaii since they aren't REAL states I guess. I had an uncle who said AK and HI weren't part of the UNITED states since they weren't united with the country. Anyway, it may have been a test to see how much a small attack would do.
There’s a lot of speculation thus far. One article I read said that it was a lone car that pulled up and a shooter opened fire at both locations which doesn’t sound like some kids’ prank at all. In my opinion, it would be prudent for the officials to look for someone who has a major beef with the utility company. There are some who wouldn’t think twice about the number of people they affect whilst taking their anger out on a specific entity.
I wonder how many of these substations there are in this country (which includes Alaska and Hawaii, despite what anyone's parent's sibling might say.) My local electric co-op is in 14 counties and serves 38,000 members. There are 26 substations on the system. When someone puts out such a small number that could have such a large effect, I gotta think there are only a handful of such substations in key locations...things like transfer stations & such. We had a member meeting not too long ago, and were talking about how the installation of fiber broadband to every home now opens up tons of monitoring & control options along every inch of our transmission lines. The president was talking about the ability to sequester off neighborhoods from the system, and I asked if that technology might be used to prevent the rest of the dominoes in the US grid from taking out our electricity. He said "That's a distinct possibility," or words that effect. He referred to "isolated islands." I don't know enough about how things are interconnected nationally or regionally to attempt to explain it. Of course, the power has got to get to us somehow. Everyone is downstream of somebody else.
We occasionally have eagles do that, as their wingspan is wide enough to short out the major connections.
Dunno Mary. I’ll still put my money on a whack job who had a grudge with the utility company. Granted, there are better ways to handle one’s problems but I can see a drunked up and / or doped up loser with a weapon shooting up a sub-station or two whilst screaming, “that’ll show ‘em”! (as opposed to blank you you blankety-blank blank blanks).
It could be any of the above speculations, but with all the madness going on in the USA that has little or no penalty for the perpetrator, my speculation is this is just another bunch of nobodies now becoming somebodies. Remember the car in Florida that was going 100 with a drunk driver headed toward the marathon runners? She was only stopped because a female police officer risk her life and used her car to stop the impending mass murder. Remember all the cases of punks shoving down old folks and robbing them or just shoving them down for no reason? Punks shoving people into the subway tracks? Mass shootings for no apparent reason. Thugs punching or beating others for no reason. How about the ongoing mass theft even in small towns from stores? The list goes on and is long about all the things that are happening and we can speculate but seldom is the reason known other than it seems to be a thing among many of our youths that are lost and have no goal or purpose in life. Look at what the young guy did and became a billionaire using currency that didn't really exist. He bought his pardon by aligning with the Democrats in power so he had no fear of committing such a crime. Look at the press and the bragging rights these sad excuses for human existence are getting for their shooting spree. There is no justice in the USA anymore so with nothing to fear, these sad lost souls commit crimes and the game is to see how much damage they can do. Most of this violence would stop if there was any equal justice. If these punks were shooting just one power transformer to see what happened, that might fit the idea that they were just kids out having fun, but to fire multiple shots taking down two substations, that goes beyond that and certainly rings true to the idea that this is no doubt some kind of crime to claim maximum carnage.
I was just thinking how you never hear of anyone 'going postal' anymore. Not shooting up close and personal? I still think a lot of shootings gets one in the news without punishment but one can still point and think 'See, I did that.'
The only poetic thing I can think of is that he, she or they knocked out their own power too when they damaged the substations. Unless, if my previous theory is correct, the shooter(s) probably had their utilities turned off by said utility company prior to the damage they did. Note: Unless someone comes forward, I don’t think anyone will know the truth about the whole thing.
This is not the first time that we have had important power grids shot and taken out, and even back around 2013, there was a huge one in California that was taken out, and it also affects internet and maybe cell service when this happens. An interesting fact about this one is that it happened near a military base, and so did the one that happened in November of this year. If terrorists are getting ready to shut down military bases by taking out the power grids, this is probably just practice for them. The FBI was called in right away, so they are very likely thinking that this was more than someone with a rifle and a grudge against something or someone. The shots were put right where they would do the most damage, and not only take down the grid, but it drained out the oil that keeps the substation running right. Anyone remember a while back when one of the big transformers at Hoover Dam suddenly went out, and then it was all swept under the rug ?