Three power substations in Washington were vandalized on Sunday, leaving 15,000 residents without electricity.
The incident occurred as early as 2:30 a.m. on Sunday when a substation controlled by Puget Sound Energy was damaged and lost power. About 7,700 customers lost power, but it was restored by 5 a.m.
But another act of vandalism was reported at around 5:30 a.m. at one substation, followed by a second substation shortly after, the sheriff’s office said. The outages affected about 7,300 customers in an area southeast of Tacoma. 7,300 customers were affected by the outages, but the utility company restored power to all but 2,700 customers just before noon.
In all three cases, someone broke into a gated area close to the substations and destroyed equipment, temporarily taking the substations out of service. It’s unclear how the equipment was damaged and whether the attack was planned.
The attacks come as federal officials are warning that the U.S. power infrastructure needs improved protection to prevent domestic terrorism after a significant outage in North Carolina earlier this month that required days to repair.
Over 40,000 people were left without power in Moore County after two substations were damaged by gunfire on Dec. 3.
“Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields reports that the mass power outage across the county is being investigated as a criminal occurrence,” the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post at the time. “Just after 7 pm on Saturday evening, December 3, 2022, several different communities across Moore County began experiencing power outages.”
Due to the massive power outage, the county has since implemented a mandatory curfew from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m.
“[Municipality and county officials] have formed a plan for the night and the next few nights that we may be out of power. It’s a very serious situation,” said county sheriff Ronnie Fields. “So we’ve come to an agreement to best protect our citizens and to protect the businesses of our county, we’re going to implement a curfew tonight.”
In January, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report stated that since at least 2020, domestic extremists have been formulating “credible, precise plans” to attack the nation’s electrical grid.
