RCMP now refer to pipeline sabotage as ‘domestic terrorism’
Sunday, July 5th, 2009
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Nathan VanderKlippe, The Globe and Mail
July 5, 2009
Light was just beginning to flood the northern British Columbia sky when Lance Delaronde was roused from his bed at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday. He opened his door to find a panicked neighbour who had been jolted awake by a loud explosion and was warning others to evacuate.
Still half-asleep, Mr. Delaronde heard enough about the blast two kilometres from his house – a cloud of dust, a hissing sound – to get his wife and two children dressed and ready to leave.
In the nearby woods, about eight kilometres south of Dawson Creek, natural gas was still leaking from a separate blast that occurred only three days before, on July 1. That was the fifth in a string of bombings that have targeted pipelines and other gas facilities operated by energy company EnCana Corp.
Saturday’s explosion took place just 500 metres from where workers were attempting to repair the earlier blast, and marked the sixth time an EnCana facility has been struck – this time a pipeline carrying toxic sour gas, RCMP later confirmed. All of the attacks have taken place within a short distance of each other, all of them around major holidays. RCMP sent nearly 20 people to scour the latest blast site for evidence that could point to whoever is responsible for an act they described for the first time with an alarming word: terrorism.
“It fits the bill in the sense that we’ve got civil and critical infrastructure that’s being attacked,” said RCMP Corporal Dan Moskaluk. “The dynamics have changed and certainly EnCana family and workers, and the community [at] large, are being terrorized by this.”