“Yes,” Nim Goldman said. “He drove out to take a look at Big Lil.”
The chairman frowned. “I hope nothing’s wrong out there.”
Instinctively, eyes swung to an instrument panel with the legend above it: LA MISSION NO. 5. This was Big Lil, the newest and largest generator at La Mission plant, fifty miles outside the city.
Big Lil—Lilien Industries of Pennsylvania built the huge machine and a news writer coined the descriptive name which stuck—was a monster delivering a million and a quarter kilowatts of electric power. It was fueled by oil in enormous quantities which created superheated steam to drive the giant turbine. In the past Big Lil had had its critics. During the planning stages experts argued it was sheerest folly to build a generator so large because too much reliance would be placed on a single source of power; they used a non-scientific simile involving eggs and a basket. Other experts disagreed. These pointed to “economies of scale,” by which they meant: mass-produced electricity is cheaper. The second group prevailed and, so far, had been proven right. In the two years since it began operating, Big Lil had been economical compared with smaller generators, magnificently reliable, and trouble-free. Today, in the Energy Control Center, a strip chart recorder showed the heartening news that Big Lil was giving its utmost, running at maximum, shouldering a massive six percent of the utility’s total load.
“There was some turbine vibration reported early this morning,” Ray Paulsen told the chairman. “The chief and I discussed it. While it probably isn’t critical, we both thought he should take a look.”
Humphrey nodded approval. There was nothing the chief could do here, anyway. It was simply more comfortable to have him around.
“Here is the Governor,” an operator announced on Humphrey’s telephone. And a moment later a familiar voice: “Good afternoon, Eric.”
“Good afternoon, sir,” the chairman said. “I’m afraid I’m calling with unhappy …”
It was then that it happened.
Amid the bank of instruments under the sign LA MISSION NO. 5 a buzzer, urgently insistent, sounded a series of short, sharp notes. Simultaneously, amber and red warning lights began blinking. The inked needle of NO. 5’s chart recorder faltered, then descended steeply.
“My God!” someone’s shocked voice said. “Big Lil’s tripped off the line.”
There remained no doubt of it as the recorder and other readings slid to zero.
Reactions were immediate. In the Energy Control Center a high-speed logging typewriter came to life, chattering, spewing out status reports as hundreds of high voltage circuit breakers at switching centers and substations sprang open at computer command. The opening of the circuit breakers would save the system and protect other generators from harm. But the action had already plunged huge segments of the state into total electric blackout. Within two or three successive seconds, millions of people in widely separated areas—factory and office workers, farmers, housewives, shoppers, salesclerks, restaurant operators, printers, service station attendants, stockbrokers, hoteliers, hairdressers, movie projectionists and patrons, streetcar motormen, TV station staffs and viewers, bartenders, mail sorters, wine makers, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, pin-ball 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 million—came 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.
“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 phone—a direct line to La Mission’s control room—Ray Paulsen was shouting, “What in hell has happened to Big Lil?”
2
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, had 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 he 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—suffcient 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 ears 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 naething tae worry over. The fat lassie will gi’ nae trouble, and what’s necessary we’ll see to when the panic’s bye.”
As he spoke, the two were standing close to Big Lil on metal gratings which formed the floor of the cathedral-like turbine hall. The monstrous turbine-generator, a city block in length, sat perched on concrete pedestals, each of the unit’s seven casings resembling a beached whale. 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 three-foot diameter steam line, one of several running from the boiler 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 by 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 turbine-generator’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 circumstances. 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 11:40 that mor
ning, 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 attaché-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 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.
The police inquiries established several things. The supposed Salvation Army officer was an impostor, almost certainly wearing a stolen uniform. The letter he 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 had, the fact was unlikely to have been forgotten.
Conjecture came next.
Most probably the bogus Salvation Army officer descended a short metal stairway to the service floor immediately beneath the main turbine hall. 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 hall 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 p.r. 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.
“Oh, 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 skepticism 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 the
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 longtime 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 heat 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.”
Nim flushed. “Planning can only go so …”
The sentence was never finished.
Teresa Van Buren, the public relations director, came into the gallery, from which she had been absent for several minutes. She was a short, plump, bustling woman in her mid-forties who invariably wore rumpled linen suits and sensible brown brogues. Often she was untidy and uncombed, and looked more like a harried housewife than the experienced corporation executive she was.