The breakdown of those plants in Pierce County, a southern suburb of Seattle, left more than 14,000 homes without power on Christmas Day, local police reported.
An investigation was opened, but no suspects had been apprehended as of Sunday, police said in a press release, adding that they were unable to know at this stage whether it was a coordinated attack.
However, police said they are aware of similar events elsewhere in Washington state, as well as in Oregon (northwest) and North Carolina (southeast).
Threats
The federal police had also warned in early December of threats to the electrical network of the company Tacoma Public Utilities, owner of two of the sabotaged infrastructures.
Militants from violent extremist groups “have developed credible and targeted plans to attack electrical infrastructure since at least 2020,” the Department of Homeland Security said last January.
In early December, about 45,000 homes and businesses were plunged into darkness in North Carolina after a gun attack on two electrical transformers. One attack came a year after the indictment in the same state of five men, alleged members of white supremacist and neo-Nazi chat groups, accused of plotting attacks on power plants.
They sought to cause “general chaos,” “with the aim of creating a state centered on white ethnicity,” according to the indictment.
