Apparent Power Sabotage Attempt

Authorities are seeking a man suspected of loosening or removing bolts from two transmission towers.

October 23, 2003
By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg -- Bee Staff Writer

The FBI was urging authorities across four Western states Wednesday to be on the lookout for an older, heavyset man who was seen removing bolts from high-voltage transmission towers in Oregon and near Redding.

Electric power officials said that even if the apparent sabotage try had succeeded, it would have been unlikely to cause blackouts because the grid is designed to respond instantly if a tower topples and a major power line fails.


Still, the Monday afternoon incidents left authorities edgy in the small town of Anderson along Interstate 5 and prompted an investigation by the FBI's domestic terror squad.

The FBI was not releasing the name of the man being sought for questioning, but the California Highway Patrol confirmed he was Michael Poulin, and Anderson police confirmed the Washington state license plate on his silver Toyota pickup truck is A36457P.

The truck is registered in Spokane Valley, a semi-rural suburb of Spokane, Wash., where Marianne Torres said she didn't know where her ex-husband has gone.

"We got divorced in September. Michael left in mid-October," she said in a telephone interview, crying and reading from a statement she had prepared for reporters. "I don't know where he is. ... That's all I can say."

Neither she nor the FBI would comment on reports that Poulin had an arrest record. The Los Angeles Times reported that he has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and arson.

Nothing about the California attack indicated sophisticated knowledge of the power grid, said Ross McFate, director of line maintenance at the Western Area Power Administration, or WAPA, the federal agency responsible for one of the targeted transmission towers.

"We think he chose it because of the accessibility, not because it was strategic to take the whole system down," said McFate.

The other tower, owned by PacificCorp., was targeted first, about 3 p.m. Monday, according to the FBI in Portland. A white man in his 60s was seen leaving the area just south of Klamath Falls, Ore., in a truck after tower bolts had been loosened.

About 2 1/2 hours later, workers for Sierra Pacific Lumber Co. were exiting I-5 when they saw a man in a white hard hat working at the base of a high-voltage tower near the freeway. They were troubled that his truck had no company logo, and they stopped to ask him what he was doing, said McFate.

The man threw his equipment into the truck and fled south on I-5, with the witnesses following him briefly, snapping pictures of his truck, the WAPA official said.

The FBI has described him as a white male in his early 60s, between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 225 to 240 pounds, with long salt-and-pepper hair, possibly a salt-and-pepper beard, and wearing wire-rimmed glasses.

He is wanted for questioning in connection with the federal crime of destruction of an energy facility, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years, FBI Special Agent Karen Ernst said in Sacramento.

All nine bolts had been pulled from one of the California tower's four legs, and six had been removed from a second leg, McFate said. The bolts were given to investigators as evidence, and the tower was stabilized by WAPA workers by about 9:30 that evening. Final repairs were completed Tuesday.

Even if all the bolts had been removed, the tower probably would have stood until a strong wind blew, and then toppled, taking down a 230-kilovolt line that shunts power from Shasta Dam to the Sacramento area, McFate said.

"Not too much would have happened ... just a big nuisance," he said. "We have a lot of redundancy built into the system." The power would have been routed to other lines, and there almost certainly would have been no blackouts, he added.

Several towers would have to fall simultaneously on several transmission lines to pose any risk of cascading power outages, said Stephanie McCorkle of the state Independent System Operator, based in Folsom.

WAPA and other transmission line owners staged extra patrols to check on other towers easily accessible from the freeway, said McFate, and other utilities will be doing their own checks, said McCorkle.

"This shows that no area, whether it be rural, small or large, is immune from the tentacles of domestic terrorists," said Anderson Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr.

Purcell said he believed the incident had "radical overtones," although there was no specific evidence pointing to any organized group.

No one has claimed responsibility for the incident.

Poulin's next-door neighbor, Gary Haynes, said Paulin did not discuss politics much, although the household posted "no blood for oil" and "no war" signs during the height of the Iraq war.

Torres confirmed that she and Poulin had run the Mother Goose Progressive Coffeehouse in Spokane until it closed earlier this year.

Haynes said Poulin also ran small businesses out of his home, including a skateboard repair shop. He described Poulin and Torres as friendly, sharing corn and other vegetables from their garden, but also "flighty," without longtime, stable jobs.

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