Overload (3 page)

viewers, bartenders, mail sorters, wine makers, doctors, dentists,

veterinarians, pinball players . . . a list ad infinitum-were deprived

of power and light, unable to continue whatever, a moment earlier, they

had been doing.

In buildings, elevators halted between floors. Airports, which had been

bursting with activity, virtually ceased to function. On streets and

highways traffic lights went out, beginning monumental traffic chaos.

More than an eighth of California-a land area substantially larger than

all of Switzerland and with a population of about three millioncame

abruptly to a standstill. What, only a short time ago, had been merely

a possibility was now disastrous reality-and worse, by far, than feared.

At the control center's communications console-protected by special

circuits from the widespread loss of power-all three dispatchers were

working swiftly, spreading out emergency instructions, telephoning orders

to generating plants and division power controllers, examining

pedal-actuated roller system maps, scanning cathode ray tube displays for

information. They would be busy for a long time to come, but actions

triggered by computers were far ahead of them now.

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"Hey," the Governor said on Eric Humphrey's telephone, "all the lights

just went out."

"I know," the chairman acknowledged. "That's what I called you about."

On another pbone-a direct line to La Mission's control room-Ray Paulsen

was shouting, "What in hell has happened to Big Lil?"

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The explosion at the La Mission plant of Golden State Power & Light occurred

entirely without warning.

A half hour earlier the chief engineer, Walter Talbot, bad arrived to

inspect La Mission No. 5-Big Lil-following reports of slight turbine

vibration during the night. The chief was a lean, spindly man, outwardly

dour, but with a puckish sense of humor and who still talked in a broad

Glaswegian accent, though for forty years he had been no nearer Scotland

than an occasional Burns Night dinner in San Francisco. He liked to take

his time about whatever be was doing and today inspected Big Lil slowly and

carefully while the plant superintendent, a mild, scholarly engineer named

Danieli, accompanied him. All the while the giant generator poured out its

power-sufficient to light more than twenty million average light bulbs.

A faint vibration deep within the turbine, and differing from its normal

steady whine, was audible occasionally to the trained cars of the chief and

superintendent. But eventually, after tests which included applying a

nylon-tipped probe to a main bearing, the chief pronounced, "It's naetbing

tae worry over. Tbe fat lassie will gi' nae trouble, and what's necessary

we'll see to when the panic's bye."

As be spoke, the two were standing close to Big Lil on metal gratings which

formed the floor of the cathedral-like turbine ball. The monstrous

turbine-generator, a city block in length, sat perched on concrete

pedestals, each of the unit's seven casings resembling a beached wbale.

Immediately beneath was a massive steam chest with high pressure steam

lines going in from the boiler and out to the turbine, as well as other

service facilities. Both men were wearing hard hats and protective ear

pads. Neither precaution, however, was of help in the explosion which

occurred with a deafening roar an instant later. The chief and Plant

Superintendent Danieli took the secondary force of a dynamite blast,

originating beneath the main hall floor, which initially breached a

tbree-foot diameter steam line, one of several running from the boiler

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to the steam chest. A smaller lubricating oil line was also pierced. The

explosion, combined with escaping steam, produced an overwhelming noise,

deep and thunderous. Then the steam, at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit and

under pressure Of 2,400 pounds per square inch, rushed through the

gratings on which the two men were standing.

Both died instantly. They were cooked, literally, like vegetables in a

steamer. A few seconds later the entire scene was obscured by dense black

smoke from the ruptured oil line, now burning-ignited by a spark from

flying metal.

Two plant workers, painting on a scaffold high above the turbine room

floor and in danger of being overcome by the rising black smoke, tried

to clamber blindly to a walkway some fifteen feet higher. They failed,

and fell to their deaths below.

Only in the plant control room-two hundred feet away and protected bv

double doors-was total disaster averted. The fast reactions of a

technician at No. 5's control panel, aided by automatic devices, ensured

that Big Lil was shut down without damage to the turbinegenerator's vital

components.

At the La Mission plant it would take several days of inquiry-a

painstaking sifting of debris by experts and questioning by sheriff's

deputies and FBI agents-to discover the explosion's cause and circum-

stances. But a suspicion of sabotage would emerge quickly and later be

proven true.

In the end, the accumulated evidence provided a fairly clear picture of

the explosion and events preceding it.

At ii:4o that morning, a white male of medium build, clean-shaven,

sallow-complexioned, wearing steel-rimmed glasses and in the uniform of

a Salvation Army officer, approached the main gate of La Mission on foot.

He was carrying an attach6-type briefcase.

Questioned by the gate security guard, the visitor produced a letter,

apparently on Golden State Power & Light stationery, authorizing him to

visit GSP & L installations for the purpose of soliciting funds from

utility employees for a Salvation Army charity-a free lunch program for

needy children.

The guard informed the Salvation Army man that he must go to the plant

superintendent's office and present his letter there. The guard gave

directions on how to reach the office which was on the second floor of

the main powerhouse and accessible through a doorway out of sight from

the guardpost. The visitor then left in the direction indicated. The

guard saw no more of him until the visitor returned and walked out of the

plant about twenty minutes later. The guard noticed he was still carrying

the briefcase.

The explosion occurred an hour later.

If security had been tighter, as was pointed out at a subsequent coro-

ner's inquest, such a visitor would not have been allowed into the plant

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unescorted. But GSP & L, like public utilities everywhere, faced special

problems-a dilemma-in matters of security. With ninety-four generating

plants, scores of service yards and warehouses, hundreds of unattended

substations, a series of widely scattered district offices and a central

headquarters comprising two connected high-rise buildings, provision of

strict security, even if possible, would cost a fortune. This, at a time

of soaring fuel, wage and other operating costs, while consumers

complained that bills for electricity and gas were already too high and

any proposed rate increase should be resisted. For all these reasons

security employees were relatively few, so that much of the utility's

security program was cosmetic, based on calculated risk.

At La Mission, the risk-at a cost of four human lives-proved to be too

high.

Ile police inquiries established several things. The supposed Salvation

Army officer was an impostor, almost certainly wearing a stolen uniform.

The letter be presented, while it may have been on official GSP & L

stationery-not difficult to come by-was a fake. The utility would not,

in any case, allow its employees to be solicited at work, nor could

anyone be located in the GSP & L organization who had written such a

letter. The La Mission security guard did not remember a name at the

bottom of the page, though he recalled the signature was "a squiggle."

It was also established that the visitor, once inside the powerhouse, did

not go to the superintendent's office. No one there saw him. If anyone

bad, the fact was unlikely to have been forgotten.

Conjecture came next.

Most probably the bogus Salvation Anny officer descended a short metal

stairway to the service floor immediately beneath the main turbine ball.

This floor, like the one above it, had no intervening walls so that even

through a network of insulated steam pipes and other service lines, the

lower portions of the several La Mission generators could be clearly seen

through the metal grating floor of the turbine hall above. Number 5-Big

Lil-would have been unmistakable because of its size and that of the

equipment near it.

Perhaps the intruder bad advance information about the layout of the

plant, though this would not have been essential. The main generating

building was an uncomplicated structure-little more than a giant box. He

might also have known that La Mission, like all modern generating

stations, was highly automated, with only a small work force; therefore

his chances of moving around without being observed were good.

Almost certainly, then, the intruder moved directly under Big Lil where

he opened his briefcase containing a dynamite bomb. He would have looked

around for an out-of-view location for the bomb, then would have seen

what seemed a convenient metal flange near the junc-

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tion of two steam lines. After actuating a timing mechanism, undoubtedly he

reached up and placed the bomb there. It was in this choice of location that

his lack of technical knowledge betrayed him. Had he been better informed,

he would have located the bomb nearer the monster generator's main shaft,

where it would have done most damage, perhaps putting Big Lil out of action

for as long as a year.

Explosives experts confirmed that this indeed had been a possibility. What

the saboteur used, they decided, was a "shaped charge"-a cone of dynamite

which, when detonated, had a forward velocity similar to that of a bullet,

causing the explosion to penetrate whatever was directly ahead. As it

happened, this was a steam line leading from the boiler.

Immediately after positioning the bomb-the hypothesis continued -the

saboteur walked unaccosted from the main generating building to the plant

gate, leaving as casually and with even less attention than when he

arrived. From that point his movements were unknown. Nor, despite intensive

investigation, did any substantial clue about identity emerge. True, a

telephoned message to a radio station, allegedly from an underground

revolutionary group-Friends of Freedom-claimed responsibility. But police

had no information as to the whereabouts of the group or knowledge of its

membership.

But all this came later. At La Mission, for some ninety minutes after the

explosion, chaos reigned.

Fire fighters, responding to an automatic alarm, had difficulty extin-

guishing the oil fire and ventilating the main turbine ball and lower

floors to remove the dense black smoke. When, at length, conditions were

clear enough, the four bodies were removed. Those of the chief engineer and