"FBI Investigates Explosion at Illinois Utility"
By Bloomberg News
Special to CNET News.com
January 1, 2000, 2:05 a.m. PT
CHICAGO--Unicom's Commonwealth Edison said the FBI is investigating what appears to be a bomb that detonated at one of the electric utility's transmission towers in Niles, Ill.
The explosion occurred just before midnight local time in the Chicago suburb, and about 4,100 customers may have noticed a brief blink in their power service, said Carl Croskey, president of ComEd's distribution group. The tower remained standing, and no one was injured.
"We have what appears to be an attempted sabotage," Croskey said. "It appears someone planted something there."
The FBI and local police are investigating the explosion, Croskey said at Chicago's Y2K command center.
ComEd employees witnessed the explosion, which was at the base of a tower, and no customers called to complain of the flickering lights.
The rest of the evening was uneventful for the power company, with only about 15 reported outages out of its 3.4 million customers, Croskey said. Those weren't Y2K related, but rather were the result of isolated incidents such as falling tree limbs.
Copyright 2000, Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.
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