Public Power - June 2008 - (Page 53)

SWAT team members worked with a power plant engineer to gain control of the spill deck and spill gates. Photo courtesy Chelan County PUD just go back down the stairs before they could grab me. I went back down to the generator floor which is two floors down, and on my way I tried to call the control room here over my radio and announce that we had a hostage situation. When I didn’t receive word back from there, I changed the band on my radio to get to system dispatchers who are in a different building across town and to advise them that we had a hostage. At that time they would have contacted the emergency response.“ Carol Wardell, whose actual position is general counsel for the PUD, explains that for the event, she played an operator in the control room. “I wasn’t playing my normal role; I wasn’t an attorney. I knew how they were going to attempt to gain entrance, and the kidnappers gained entrance by use of an employee’s security and by forcing that employee to gain entry into the control room.“ “They took me and one other person www.APPAnet.org hostage. We were tied up and left in a room outside the control room. They didn’t need us anymore. They then took control of the operating room. They were going to open the spill gate so the water would just run straight through the dam. We waited and waited to be rescued. There were two entrances to the control room. When the SWAT team arrived, they jumped over us the hostages- to go and take care of the control room and make sure everybody was safe. Wardell discovered a few things in the process. “I think of myself as a fairly observant person,“ she says. In the past she had served as a Superior Court judge, and in that position, “I would always hear these eye witness testimonies that didn’t make sense.” Someone would be standing right at the scene and yet later, when testifying, they could not give details. That was frustrating, she says, but now she could relate to confused witness testimony. “When the SWAT team finally got back to me to ask me (how many terrorists came in), I couldn’t remember exactly how many…and worse, I couldn’t tell the SWAT JUNE 2008 53 http://www.phase-a-matic.com http://www.APPAnet.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - June 2008

Public Power - June 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions Finding Common Ground on Climate Change Solutions A Patchwork Approach to Renewable Energy Whose Grid Is It Anyway? The Little Utility That Could Benchmarking Customer Service Can Prairie Hay Power Your Town? Storming the Control Room Investing in the Smart Grid Coming of Age: Superconducting Cables Community Broadband Economic Development Customer Service Human Resources For Governing Boards Safety Parting Shot

Public Power - June 2008

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