WOODLAND, Wash. — Law enforcement authorities said two electric substations in Woodland were attacked by vandals, adding to the list of known attacks on the power grid. The two cases in the Cowlitz County city happened in mid-November of last year, before other attacks that gained national attention.
The vandalism at one location on November 17 was combined with damage at an adjoining construction site at the same time.
Police say the substation at the end of Robinson Road was hit in the early morning hours and caused a very brief outage before other systems kicked in.
Vandals busted into the control house, according to Woodland Police Sergeant James Keller.
“And that's what they try to break into to damage the circuit boards to try to take the power station out,” he said.
Right next to the substation is a building going up for a commercial trailer business. Jeff Zimmerman is the owner of Trailer Sales LLC. He said the suspects broke through the fence to get into the Cowlitz PUD substation.
“And what's interesting is that they didn't go into the substation to try and steal stuff, they went into the substation to damage it,” said Zimmerman.
It appears the vandals had hopes of doing more damage, with the help of forklifts belonging to construction crews at the building site. Brian Kemp is construction superintendent for Bunch Construction, overseeing the building job. Kemp’s phone rang early on November 17.
“They gave me call, said 'the FBI was here, the substation just got attacked', and I was in shock. They sent me photos and I was in disbelief,” said Kemp.
Construction crews took photos that show how the vandals unsuccessfully tried to hotwire two forklifts, causing about a thousand dollars in damage in the process.
“So my thought is, if they're trying to hotwire the forklifts and didn't steal anything, I honestly think they were going to try and use them as battering rams,” said Kemp.
The Robinson Road case was the first of two incidents. The other attack happened the next day at a Cowlitz PUD substation on Pekin Road on the west side of Woodland.
“This time they damaged the circuit boards even more, the window was smashed out and the outage was several hours,” said Sgt. Keller.
Two substations were damaged in two days’ time in one relatively small town. Like others before, possible motives run the gamut.
“Anytime somebody messes with the power grid there's always ulterior motives, whether it’s terrorism, whether it is extremism, or in Pierce County, they took the power grid down to try and break into businesses,” said Keller.
Keller added that they have very little to go on with the Woodland cases, but they are working with the FBI to try and figure out who did this and why.
For now, business owner Zimmerman said it’s anybody’s guess why the substations were targeted.
“You can draw a lot of conclusions; until they catch who's done it you're not going to know.
According to Sgt. Keller, one thing is very clear in all these cases: anyone breaking into power substations is risking death messing with high voltage equipment.