July 20, 2004

Hi Steve:

As your website already reports, we have had another fire today. The local talk radio shows were flooded with callers about various theories, and the "t" word is being mentioned quite a bit. The radio hosts are being very cautious and, I think, probably trying to avert a panic, but APS and SRP are not volunteering a cause for this second fire, and they are still not saying about the cause of the first one. They tried to pin the first fire (on 7/4, not 7/5 as I previously stated) on lightning, but I was outside that night watching fireworks all over the city and the weather was clear, no storms, nothing. This fire, because of the timing, tied up a lot of early morning traffic as well as leaving a lot of people without power. It's going to be about 111 degrees today, with a predicted 114 tomorrow, so this can be life threatening to some.

Some people are saying this could not be terrorist-related, that they would do something on a much grander scale, but I think those folks may be stuck in 9-11 style thinking. Given how terrorists are operating in Baghdad, it seems to me you would be much more effective in demoralizing people and putting them in a constant fearful state by daily, smaller scale attacks on 'soft' targets.

Regardless, there is a bunch of law enforcement personnel at this latest fire, and the word is that security is going to be ramped up around these substations. Thing is, one caller on talk radio was a former guard who had just gotten laid off from doing this exact same thing.......anyhow, I thought I would let you know what is going on here from a more grassroots perspective.

Name withheld