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June 2002 IBEW Journal The fact that the nations electricity system is vulnerable to terrorist attack is nothing new to the IBEW, whose warnings on the topic have deep roots, notably in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Until recently, Congress remained unconcerned by the disaster warnings from the IBEW, according to Utility Department Director James Dushaw. The thought that a few well-placed bombs could take out the power-delivery infrastructure on the whole East Coast seemed too remote, too unthinkably fantastic to warrant serious vigilance. No more. The terror events of September 11 changed the paradigm of domestic security in the United States.
"When I came into the industry in 1960, they did pre-employment background and security screening, including FBI background checks, on utility employees," Dushaw said. "The country was much more concerned about civil defense in the years following WWII." In that era and continuing in the Cold War, there was the sense that domestic saboteurs lurked within, waiting for an opportunity to break national morale by any means at their disposal. Today, terms like "Fifth Column" do not sound as paranoid as they once did. The only difference is now the bad guys are called "evil doers." Nine months after September 11, the country is still reacting to the new age of terrorism. And we are out of practice.
The utility that services the nations capital, including the White House and scores of other top government buildings, offers an example that demonstrates how dramatically things have changed. Hunter said that every utility truck used to contain "feeder maps," which detail the intricate network of power lines from substations to individual customers. "In the past, when they were revised, you took your old map and threw it in the trash," Hunter said. "Since 9/11, thats changed. Suddenly what was once just trash has to be looked at in a different light. Now it could be used by a terrorist." In one incident that might have been considered funny if the stakes were not so high, security personnel discovered a rifle-toting intruder in the middle of a restricted area of a power plant in rural Maryland. It was a hunter, tracking a deer, but after September 11, his presence highlighted the fact that utilities had some security holes to plug. At a recent meeting of northeastern utility plant managers, state regulators, law enforcement officials and others, the participants were faced with a startling realization: the electricity system, which functions capably even during intermittent component failures, would probably not withstand multiple coordinated attacks. Now the industry must negotiate the FBIs National Threat Warning System, which has been delivering a steady slew of ominous warnings to utilities and water supplies since September 11. "These FBI alerts are coming out on a daily basis, frequently on the utility industry," Hunter said. Nuclear plants already had relatively high security but other utilities had very little. In the months since September 11, utilities have been forced to create internal departments to assess these alerts and decide when and if to heighten security based on FBI warnings. Previous | Next |
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And
today, the entire system of energy delivery, including oil and gas
pipelines, electricity transmission lines, power stations and nuclear
power plants, is coming under watershed review. Suddenly, the FBI
is warning of attacks in the messages it shuttles to the gatekeepers
of the nations core energy infrastructure. And utilities are rewriting
policies and rethinking security to an extent not seen since World
War II, when the nation was much more waryat least more wary than
it had become before September 11 of last year.
"All
the utilities are going through a dramatic change in how they look
at security," said IBEW International Representative Jim Hunter.
"All of it is new to the industry and everyones feeling their
way through it."