Electric power: The foundation of modern civilization
Our civilization is built on electric power. During my decade working in emergency management, I frequently saw that the worst thing that could happen for the largest number of people was when a natural disaster knocked out the power to homes and businesses.
Yes, there were some who had their homes damaged or destroyed by a tornado, flood, or even an ice storm.
However, the impact of the disaster on the majority of people was the loss of electricity that powers heating and air conditioning systems, appliances and entertainment such as television and Internet.
When a tornado struck the small town of Marmaduke, a town of about 1,100 people about 30 miles north of Paragould, I was sent by the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management to be the head of the state part of the state and federal recovery office.
Most of the town was without electric power because of storm damage.
There were two convenience stores in town. One had a generator that provided electricity. The owner there was selling things like food, fountain drinks, and gasoline as fast as people could be checked out.
Prices had been jacked up by 10 percent, which is all Arkansas law allows in price increases during an emergency. There can be no doubt that without any competition that the owner made a lot of money during the time there was no power available to the town.
The other store, located across the street, was closed. It had no generator and the owner had to wait for days for the electricity to be restored. All the owner could do was stay outside to make sure nobody broke in and stole things.
Unfortunately, some bad people have learned the lesson that our civilization is based on the availability of power.
On Christmas Day, an estimated 15,000 people lost their electricity when four electric power facilities were damaged in Washington state.
The problem of no power was more dangerous than normal because of the cold from Elliott, the winter storm caused by an arctic front.
The local sheriff’s office got a report that Sunday morning at 5:36 a.m. that a local power substation had been damaged and power was out in the area.
At first, the suspicion was that vandalism was the cause of the power outage.
Later that morning, a second call came in that another power substation had sustained similar damage and that area was also without electricity. A third call came in even later about the same thing happening again.
Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond series of novels, had a quote by the villain in the book “Goldfinger” that said: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
On Monday, another report came in that a fourth substation had been damaged and it had started a fire. Even more people lost their electric power. This attack on the power grid was obviously deliberate.
Law enforcement agencies had received a warning from the FBI in early in December that warned of possible planned attacks against Pacific Northwest substations. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. About three weeks earlier, the power grid in North Carolina was damaged and about 45,000 people lost power.
All these damaged electric facilities had one thing in common: the only thing protecting them was chain link fences. Maybe “protecting” was too strong a word.
The federal government — as usual — is moving with the speed of a turtle on Xanax to respond to the problem.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the agency tasked with regulating the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil, has asked the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) in Atlanta, Ga., to investigate if security around the bulk power systems is too lax and to determine “whether the standard needs to be improved.”
NERC has 120 days to make that report to FERC. FERC will then decide what action should be taken. Then FERC will ask Congress for the money to pay for the new protection plan.
This is the standard bureaucratic response to a problem: Study if there is a problem (obviously there is), come up with a plan to fix the problem (more security is the obvious answer) and then beg Congress for funds (and politicians will debate if there is money available to pay for the solution).
Meanwhile, the people behind these attacks on the power grid are free to use this low cost effort to terrorize American citizens.
Anybody with electric power will be lucky if there is a plan in place to protect the power grid by this time next year.