Power station attacks leave thousands in the dark and spark fears of extremism

Over 14,000 Americans have been left without power after several power substations were vandalized Sunday.

These attacks come less than a month after two North Carolina substations were attacked leaving around 45,000 people without power.

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The vandals hit four power stations in Tacoma, Washington on Christmas Day.

The first attack in Washington happened at about 5:30 a.m. at a Tacoma Public Utilities substation.

Though nothing was taken, residents in the area lost power.

Shortly after, authorities got word that another substation was broken into.

“Over 7,000 customers in Graham and Elk Plain were without power, and we continue to work to restore power as quickly and safely as possible,” Tacoma Public Utilities stated after the second attack.

As Christmas morning progressed, Puget Sound Energy reported that they too had a power failure at about 2:30 a.m. according to The New York Times.

The fourth attack happened around 7:30 p.m. at another substation of Puget Sound Energy.

In a Facebook post written by Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, residents were informed that firefighters and Puget employees responded to the scene and extinguished the fire.

Concerns over the susceptibility of the United States’ power grid are now on the rise.

Federal regulators have ordered a review of security standards saying: “In recent months, there has been an increase in reports of physical attacks on electric substations that in some incidents have resulted in thousands of customer outages.”

The draft order would force the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to assess the efficacy of the Physical Security Reliability Standard while taking the recent attacks into account.