Three substations attacked in Washington state

• Two of our substations were purposefully targeted by physical attack.
• 14,000 customers were impacted by the attack on three energy substations.
• It is believed that outages were caused to stop “Downtown Divas,” a drag show.

Many people who were left without power after vandals damaged the electrical infrastructure in the Tacoma region appear to have had their power restored.

As many as 14,000 customers were impacted by the attack on three energy substations in the Tacoma, Washington, area on Sunday, according to the authorities.

The early-morning attacks on two Tacoma Public Utilities substations and a Puget Sound Energy plant were labelled as vandalism by the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, and the perpetrators remain at large.

The sheriff’s office issued a statement saying, “It is uncertain if there are any motives or if this was a concerted attack on the electrical systems.

At one point on Sunday, the government estimated that 14,000 homes and businesses were impacted.

More than 7,000 Tacoma Public Utilities customers were without power on Sunday in the Graham and Elk Plain communities, and late in the day, restoration efforts were still ongoing.

On its website, Puget Sound Energy reported that more than 1,200 customers were without power on Sunday. The vast majority of those customers have already been reconnected, however it is unclear whether this was due to the attack. It didn’t answer right away when asked for comment.

The nationwide blackout tracker PowerOutage.us reported late Sunday afternoon that less than 5,000 customers were still without power across the state, so it appears that electricity has been restored for many of the TPU customers.

Two of our substations were purposefully targeted by physical attacks, according to a statement from TPU.

The first of those incidents, which was reported at 2:39 a.m., involved a person or individuals breaking into the facilities and damaging equipment, according to the sheriff’s department.

TPU claimed that this month, federal law enforcement informed it of the potential for assaults and suggested doing a security evaluation. It refused to disclose what steps, if any, it took.

Separate attacks on six substations run by Portland General Electric, the Bonneville Power Administration, the Cowlitz County Public Utility District, and Puget Sound Energy in Washington and Oregon were reported to have occurred in mid-November by Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW public radio of Seattle at the same time. According to the publications, the instances allegedly involved violations of utility property.

According to officials, on December 3, criminals broke into two Duke Energy substations in Moore County, North Carolina, leaving 45,000 people without power for more than three days. They claimed that individuals armed with firearms fired shots, broke into a facility in one instance, and went missing about a month later.

Dec. 7, when the final North Carolina customers had their energy restored, shots were fired in the vicinity of a Duke Energy hydro facility in Ridgeway, South Carolina, roughly 130 miles south of Moore County. Federal authorities were reviewing the ballistic data from the two incidents to see if they were related.

According to two senior law enforcement officials informed on the situation this month, investigators investigating into the North Carolina attacks were examining online conspiracy theories to see whether any had any bearing on the events.

The widespread belief was that the outages were caused to stop “Downtown Divas,” a drag show, from going on at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines, North Carolina. Prior to the event on Saturday night, which went on in the dark before ending early, anti-LGBTQ protesters attacked the area.

White supremacists and other right-wing extremists who want to “destabilise” America have long wanted to attack power infrastructure, according to Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Federal prosecutors stated at the time that three men had admitted guilt in connection with a plan to interfere with the energy grid, cause unrest and economic instability, and ultimately start a race war.

There is no evidence linking the attacks in Washington, Oregon, and Carolina to one another. Attacks on Saturday in the Tacoma region were still being looked at.

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