© Copyright 6-28-08 by 45 Mike
In the mid to late eighties I was living very close to Grand Coulee Dam in Eastern Washington. A small town named Electric City about 3 miles above the dam itself.
At that time, the top of the dam was open to traffic, *any* traffic. Including big trucks.
One of my buddies was a retired police officer and former SEAL team operative. Because of health issues he was no longer active, except as a private investigator. He taught me a lot. Because of his local connections, he often worked with the security forces for the dam itself.
One day I began thinking that allowing those big trucks to cross the dam was a bad idea. Note that this was about 20 years before *terrorism* began escalating to where we are now.
I sat down with Mike one day over coffee and expressed my concern to him about the traffic on the dam. I explained that it would be easy to have a truck loaded with explosives drive about halfway over the dam, then stop. Hydraulic jacks could then be activated that would tip the rig over on the high side of the dam. The truck could be fitted with either a timer, or a depth trigger.
Mike told me that “Yes, but nothing short of a nuclear bomb would actually break the dam.”
I agreed, then explained that the explosion would not be for the purpose of *breaking* the dam, but for damaging the generators, shutting down the ability of the dam to create electricity. The disruption of the grid would black out most of the west coast. Possibly for weeks. In any case the damage costs would be huge, perhaps in the billions to repair, if any repair could be made.
I would assume that he spoke to the security folks, (feds) that he had connections with, because within a week the top of the dam had big gates and big signs at each end, Absolutely NO trucks allowed to cross the top of the dam.
This is TRUE.