Another attack, that again is not making the news

Remember the 52-minute sniper attack on the Metcalf substation in the bay area last year?  Of course you don't.  It was barely reported when it happened, and when it was highly reported nearly a year later there are still non-believers that it was a terror attack.  Instead it was a news story that the "right-wing kooks" put out to try to discredit the government. Remember?  It ended up being a Republican Democrat fight rather than focusing on the terror attack.

An interesting thing about it wasn't that 17 transformers were knocked out.  What's interesting is that the transformers that weren't powered were not hit and the ones that were running power were.  That's not the luck of some random group of nighttime rabble-rousers.   

Sure PG&E was able to prevent a large scale blackout but the scary part of this hasn't been discussed.  More than 100 shots were fired but not one cartridge was found, they can't trace anything.  The weapons had the ability to catch them.  No fingerprints on anything.  No DNA from anything out in the hills.  No hair to test.  No tire tracks to trace.  No scents to track.  No, that's not the scary part.  The scary part is that the public has been so nonchalant about this.  Never mind that it took out the 911 system to hundreds of thousands of people. 

I do not believe that the purpose was just to shoot at this substation.  I believe that the purpose was just a practice attack for something much bigger.  If this attack was to take out not only the electricity but the phone company, through the loss of power, not only the 911 system but the alarm systems as well, imaging the havoc on San Francisco.  No power for the transportation system, the banking system, the water system, etc.  I know some of the investigators and this is their belief.  That it was a trial run. 

What about this week's attack on the grid here in California?  What have you heard about it?  Nothing?  Well, that's because it didn't cause a catastrophe.  We're not talking a substation, like last years attack.  No, this could have been much worse.  The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was doing some routine inspections and on some of their main transmission lines the main bolts were removed.  This was not accidental.  Was the plan was to cause enough tension that the towers or lines would come crashing down domino style?   Maybe in a year or so we will hear about this in the news. 

Are you prepared for the power to go down?  With winter storms there are many that find it routine to lose power.  Not here in California though.  We complain if the power goes out for more than a few minutes.  Last month our power was out for over a day due to a vehicle accident.  Sure we were inconvenienced and had to get out the candles and oil lamps during the evening hours.  It wasn't much of an inconvenience though as our biggest problem has always been water when the power went out.  Not anymore.  With timing that couldn't have been any  better, we finally had a good hand-pump installed on the well.  This isn't one of those cheap things you find at the local hardware store.  This is real heavy duty and will last longer than my lifetime. So we actually had some fun during that power outage hand pumping our water.