Snipers Attacked A Silicon Valley Power Station Last Year And Nobody Told Us

February 6th, 2014

See Fiber Optic Cables Cut in California (2009) for commentary that applies here as well. They called that one vandalism. Oh sure.

That one happened in April too. Hmm.

Via: sfist:

Around 1 a.m. on April 16th last year, a team of attackers cut phone likes and took out 17 power transformers at a PG&E substation south of San Jose, nearly causing a blackout throughout Silicon Valley. According to the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it was the “most significant incident of domestic terrorism” involving the nation’s power grid. No one has been charged or arrested in the attack.

The Wall Street Journal, broke news of the attack today, pieced together a timeline of events that unfolded in the middle of the night, just yards from Highway 101:

The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.

Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.

Research Credit: Dale and IB

One Response to “Snipers Attacked A Silicon Valley Power Station Last Year And Nobody Told Us”

  1. Dennis says:

    The incident last year was also in the same general area. All locations were less than 45 minutes drive from each other and also took place after 1 a.m. on a week night. Nice and dark and quiet. Also only an hour after a date change in a computer system.

    Blackout through Silicon Valley. Makes me wonder if someone had transferred funds electronically and needed a massive reset of the system to cover it up. Start the transfer at 00:01, drive 20 minutes or so to cut the lines, then off to the sub-station, bang-bang-bang and presto-chango. I wonder if any big corporations in Silicon Valley lost back-up power that night as well.

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