Overload

The explosion occurred an hour later.

If security had been tighter, as was pointed out at a subsequent coroner’s inquest, such a visitor would not have been allowed into the plant 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 had 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 junction 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 extinguishing 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 superintendent, scarcely recognizable, were described by a horrified plant employee as "like boiled lobsters"-the result of exposure to superheated steam.

A quick assessment of damage to No. 5 revealed that it was slight. A seized bearing where the lubricating oil supply was cut off by the explosion would require replacement. That was all. Repair work, including replacement of broken steam lines, would take a week, after which the giant generator could be back in service. Ironically, in that time, the slight vibration which the chief engineer had come to inspect could be corrected, too.

3

"An electrical distribution system that’s gone into a widespread, non-scheduled blackout," Nim Goldman explained patiently, "is like the kids’ game of ‘Fifty-two Pickup! One minute you’re looking at a full deck, then the next-without warning-a floor littered with cards. They have to be picked up one by one and the whole thing takes a while."

He was in an observation gallery, slightly above and separated by a glass wall from the Energy Control Center, to which reporters from newspapers, TV and radio had been admitted a few minutes ago, the reporters had been dispatched hastily to GSP&L from their various news centers, and the utility’s PR vice president, Teresa Van Buren, had appealed to Nim to be the company’s spokesman. An impromptu press conference was the result.

Already some of the press people were antagonistic because of what they saw as a paucity of answers to their questions.

"Ob, for God’s sake!" a reporter from the California Examiner, Nancy Molineaux, protested. "Spare us that homespun analogy crap and tell us what we came to find out. What went wrong? Who’s responsible? What, if anything, will be done about it? When will the power be back on?"

Ms. Molineaux was intense, attractive in a severe way-high cheekbones made her face seem haughty, which she sometimes was-and her usual expression was a mixture of curiosity and scepticism bordering on disdain. She was also chic, wore good clothes well on a willowy body, and was black. Professionally, she had achieved a reputation for investigating, then exposing, venality in public places. Nim regarded her as he would a needle-sharp icicle. Her reporting in the past had made clear that GSP & L was not an institution Ms. Molineaux admired.

Several other reporters nodded agreement.

"What went wrong was an explosion at La Mission." Nim controlled an impulse to snap back angrily. "We believe that at least two of our people have been killed but there’s an oil fire and dense smoke, and so far there are no more details."

Someone asked, "Do you have names of the two dead?"

"Yes, but they can’t be released yet. The families must be informed first."

"Do you know the cause of the explosion?"

‘No.’, Ms. Molineaux injected, "What about the power?"

"Some power," Nim said, "is already back now. Most of the rest should be restored within four hours, six at the outside. Everything else should be normal by tonight."

Normal, Nim thought, except for Walter Talbot. Word of the chief’s involvement in the explosion and his assumed death had reached the Energy Control Center with shattering suddenness only minutes earlier. Nim, a long-time friend of the chief’s, hadn’t had time yet to grasp the reality of the news, or to grieve, as he knew he would later. Nim had known Danieli, the La Mission plant superintendent, only slightly, so that his loss, while tragic, seemed more remote. Through the soundproof glass partition separating the observation gallery from the Control Center working area, Nim could see urgent activity continuing at and around the dispatch console. He wanted to get back there as quickly as he could.

"Will there be another blackout tomorrow?" a wire service correspondent wanted to know.

"Not if the beat wave ends, as we understand it will."

As questioning continued, Nim. launched into a description of peak load problems in unexpectedly hot weather.

"So what you’re really saying," Nancy Molineaux suggested tartly, "is that you people hadn’t planned, hadn’t foreseen, hadn’t allowed for anything which might jolt you out of the ordinary."