What motivated the Pacific Northwest substation attacks?

SPANAWAY, Pierce County — 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 next lot over, a Puget Sound Energy electrical substation was dark. The constant hum of power had ceased.

“There was nothing. No movement or people,” Henkel recalled.

The substation near Spanaway was one of four tucked into forested neighborhoods in east Pierce County struck by sabotage on Sunday, which left more than 30,000 customers at least briefly without power, according to new information from Puget Sound Energy and Tacoma Power.

These attacks 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 grid as local law enforcement officials and the FBI try to determine who is responsible, and the motives behind the destruction.

All of the Pierce County attacks came under the cover of darkness within an area stretching about 14 miles driving distance from north to south.

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.

Neighbors and law enforcement have given different accounts of the timing of the next two attacks at Tacoma Power substations less than 3 miles apart. They may have unfolded in rapid succession beginning about 5 a.m. More than 7,000 customers lost power, with most regaining electricity by the next morning, according to Tacoma Power.

The last attack, which sparked a fire, targeted another PSE substation near Kapowsin about 7:20 p.m., as power company officials already had swarmed into east Pierce County. That knocked out power to 15,000 customers, with most restored in about an hour, but 500 had to wait for 16 hours, according to PSE.

Sgt. Darren Moss, a spokesperson for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, says the Sunday incidents could be the work of one person or group.

“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.

Attractive target

These are the latest in a string of attacks on the grid during the past decade that have highlighted the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid. One unresolved 2013 rifle attack on a substation in Metcalf, California, marked a “turning point for the U.S. electrical power sector,” prompting utilities to reevaluate their security.

It also led to a new national standard that called for increased protections, according to a 2018 Congressional Research Service report. That report said security “remains a work in progress.”

In recent years, several federal cases have highlighted the continued attraction of the grid to extremists.

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.

An August 2021 federal indictment alleged five men — who communicated via a message board used by neo-Nazis — planned to destroy substations in the Pacific Northwest as part of a plan to create “general chaos,” and undertake assassinations in an effort to form a white ethno-state. Two of the men have entered guilty pleas, while three are still awaiting trial, according to federal court records.

In February, three men from Indiana, Texas and Wisconsin pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, as part of a plot to further white supremacist ideology by attacking regional power substations.

Then, late in the year, came new high-profile attacks, with elusive motives.

On Dec. 3, two North Carolina substations were attacked by gunfire, cutting out power to about 45,000 people. Days later, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, alongside Duke Energy and Moore County officials, offered up to $75,000 in rewards for people with information on the attacks.

In the Northwest, one of the November targets was an Oregon substation operated by the Bonneville Power Administration, a major marketer of hydroelectric and nuclear power to the Northwest and California. On Thanksgiving morning, two people cut through a fence, then “used firearms to shoot up and disable numerous pieces of equipment and cause significant damage,” according to an internal agency email cited in a Dec. 8 news report by Oregon Public Broadcasting and Seattle’s KUOW.

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.”

Witnesses recount Christmas Day

So far, law enforcement officials have not released details on how the Christmas Day attacks in Pierce County may have been carried out, descriptions of the damage, or their cost to repair.

Tacoma Power, in a written statement, said that as federal authorities have issued warnings and alerts, “we have evolved and increased our security measures … and will continue to do so.”

PSE, in a written statement, said the 2013 California incident highlighted the importance of security, and that it continues to invest in extensive monitoring and protection measures.

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.

Across the road, he could see “blue arcing flames” shooting up from some of the equipment in the center of the substation. The fire lasted about a half-hour before being put out.

On Wednesday, the fence that surrounds the substation near some scruffy forest had a cut, since stitched back together, that may have offered a point of entry to the hazardous electrical equipment.

“I’m still amazed that they got out of there alive,” Moore said.

There are different accounts of what may have happened as the power went off at the station in Spanaway.

Henkel, along with her husband Tom, said they did not hear gunshots before the power going out about 5 a.m. And Moss, the Pierce County sheriff’s spokesperson, said gunfire had not been reported to the department during the attacks.

Yet three other Spanaway area residents, one of whom asked not to be identified, said they heard what sounded like someone shooting.

Eva Robinett, who lives less than a mile from the Spanaway substation, said she was lying in bed when the power went out. She heard her bedroom fan turn off, and then six pops ring out not long after. Her husband was getting up early to prepare a 14-pound Christmas prime rib.

“And then my husband goes, ‘Are those gunshots?’” she said.

Robinett posted about hearing what seemed to be gunshots on the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department Facebook page.

Christopher Langley and his family live less than a mile away from the substation. His children were up about 5 a.m. to look for presents under their Christmas tree when they lost power. “And then we heard a whole round of gunshots go off,” said Langley, who also posted his account to the Sheriff’s Department page. He estimated there were five to seven rounds.

For Kathryn Henkel, the substation outage was a nerve-wracking blow. She had planned to cook a turkey dinner for her extended family of 12 who all live in the house.

Without power, those plans were shelved.

As the hours wore on, she worried about her mother-in-law, who, without electricity, was rapidly using up stockpiled bottles of oxygen. By late afternoon, she thought she would have to take her mother to a hospital emergency room to make sure she had a continued supply of oxygen.

She seethed as she pondered the actions of the unknown perpetrator of the attack.

“We made the best of it. We ate McDonald’s for dinner,” she said. “But I was beyond livid that I possibly was going to have to put my mother-in-law in the hospital when she wasn’t even sick on Christmas.”