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Wisconsin: Bolts taken from towers, police say
Sabotage caused power loss for 17,000 customers in Wisconsin.Oak Creek - Stopping short of calling it a terrorist act, officials said Sunday that the weekend collapse of two electric transmission towers was caused by someone purposely removing bolts that held the towers in place... The bolts in question either held legs of the tower into a concrete base or connected parts of the tower to each other.. As the 80-foot towers collapsed, they brought down at least one nearby power line, which was still draped across the tracks Sunday. A southbound Canadian Pacific freight train stopped on the tracks about 75 yards north of the downed lines. It was still on the tracks Sunday... Bauer said the tracks were expected to be cleared and opened to rail traffic sometime Sunday night. FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Troy said his agency has issued a general warning to municipalities to watch for tampering with infrastructure and that FBI offices nationwide had been alerted. Similar to earlier incidents: In February, a 62-year-old Spokane, Wash., man was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for removing bolts in legs of about 20 electrical transmission towers in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. The man, Michael Devlyn Poulin, said he tampered with the towers to show how vulnerable America is to terrorist attack. Troy said transmission towers had been targeted by other people in other regions as well... ...Details would be nice, but instead we get the sad story of all the train passengers making their way home...barefoot, through 18'deep snowdrifts, in the dark, with the hand of every man against them...you get the picture. I'm sure it wasn't fun for them being unexpectedly stranded, though.
Posted by: trailing wife 2004-10-12 |
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