Saboteurs Attack California, Oregon Transmission Towers

Oct. 21, 2003

LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) - Environmental extremists could be involved in the attempted sabotage of two giant electricity transmission towers on Monday, the head of a California police department said on Tuesday.

Officials said a man fled after he was discovered late Monday afternoon apparently removing nuts and bolts at the base of a transmission tower near Anderson in northern California. About two hours earlier near Klamath Falls in Oregon, around 150 miles (240 km) north of Anderson, someone was discovered tampering with the base of another transmission tower, police and utility sources said. "I think it is more than just a coincidence. It certainly has the overtones of some sort of domestic terrorist activity," Anderson Chief of Police Neil Purcell Jr. said, adding he had turned the investigation over to the FBI.

Purcell said the three men who saw the man at the transmission tower near Anderson described him as an overweight white male with long gray hair and a beard wearing wire-rimmed glasses. He fled in a vehicle with Washington state plates. The Western Area Power Administration, a federal agency, owned the transmission tower, part of a 115 kilovolt power line which carries electricity from two nearby hydropower dams. WAPA spokeswoman LaVerne Kyriss said the agency had managed to repair the tower and said the incident was "very serious." "We took care of that (the repair) immediately ... We don't know if this is an isolated incident," she told Reuters. The earlier incident in Oregon involved a transmission tower owned by Portland, Oregon-based PacifiCorp, a unit of Scottish Power Plc.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service
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