SPANAWAY, Wash. — Shortly after 5 a.m. on Christmas Day, Kathryn Henkel and her family were rousted by an unfamiliar quiet, a signal something was wrong.
The big-screen television in their living room, normally on through the night, cut off. So did the refrigerator — and the oxygen concentrator that helps her mother-in-law breathe.
The first was on a PSE substation about 2:40 a.m. and shut off power to 7,689 customers for two and half hours, according to a company statement. “We can’t confirm that. But obviously, we are going to look at it that way. Four of them in one day. On Christmas Day. That screams, ‘I want to make a point.’ What point do they want to make? I don’t know,” he said.
In 2019, Stephen Plato McRae, in a federal plea agreement, was sentenced to 8 years in prison after admitting to shooting at a Utah substation in September 2016. He also admitted to earlier attacks in Utah and Nevada. McRae “engaged in this conduct in an effort to target producers of fossil fuel to bring attention to global climate change,” according to a 2021 federal court decision denying a request for sentence reduction.
The memo obtained by the news stations also referred to “several attacks on various substations” in Western Washington, “including setting the control houses on fire, forced entry and sabotage of intricate electrical control systems, causing short circuits by tossing chains across the overhead busywork, and ballistic attack with small caliber firearms.”
Gary Moore, who lives across from the Puget Sound Energy substation near Kapowsin, said he did not hear any gunshots or noise that Sunday evening. He and his wife were having a Christmas visit with a friend when, through a front window, they noticed power company and first responder vehicles driving past and parking at the substation.
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What motivated the electrical substation attacks in the Pacific Northwest?Christmas Day attacks on substations in the Puget Sound region followed six others in November — four in Washington and two in Oregon — that have once again stoked concerns about the security of the region’s power grid. Via seattletimes
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