Thousands of residents in Aspen, Colorado, have been left without heat and hot water during the cold mountain winter after an attack on natural gas lines disrupted service for days.
At least 3,500 homes and businesses were caught in the cold after a coordinated attack on three different locations on Saturday damaged gas lines in the area, according to the Aspen Times. The FBI is assisting in the investigation.
“It’s almost, to me, an act of terrorism,” Pitkin County Commissioner Patti Clapper said. “It’s trying to destroy a mountain community at the height of the holiday season. This wasn’t a national gas glitch. This was a purposeful act. Someone is looking to make a statement of some kind.”
Photos released from the Aspen Police Department show “Earth First!” written on one of the damaged pipes, with similar vandalism found on another. Founded in 1980, Earth First is a radical environmental group that advocates using civil disobedience and acts of sabotage to raise awareness for what it sees as the impending climate crisis.
“Our front-line, direct action approach to protecting wilderness gets results,” the movement’s website reads. “Our direct actions in defense of the last wild places only seem radical compared to an entire paradigm of denial and control, where the individual is convinced they are powerless, and the organizations set up to protect the wilderness continue to bargain it away.”
Activists affiliated with Earth First have not taken credit for the attack, and investigators have not released a statement on potential suspects.
“Investigators released a photo to the Aspen Daily News from one of the crime scenes with ‘Earth First!’ scrawled in black marker.”https://t.co/QzczNr1gUR pic.twitter.com/UEtx6gcui0
— JAFO (@CCnutson) December 29, 2020
While Pitkin County Sheriff Joe DiSalvo affirmed the consensus that the gas disruption was an “intentional act,” he stopped short of characterizing it as an attack.
“I know that word’s been thrown around a lot — it’s not the word I would use to characterize this event. I would say it is an intentional act to disrupt gas service and the surrounding area with felony-level criminal nature,” DiSalvo said Monday during a press briefing, according to the Aspen Daily News. “I think ‘attack’ may be a mischaracterization, at least from my perspective, and somewhat hyperbolic.”
Three days after the attack was first reported, full service has not been restored to all residents in Aspen. Technicians worked overnight Monday into Tuesday to restore heat in the area, according to a Facebook post from the Aspen Police Department, with relighting in some areas beginning Tuesday morning. For those still without power, the Aspen police and fire departments are distributing space heaters, but Aspen Police Chief Bill Linn said that distributing enough heaters has been “complicated” by an incoming winter storm.
“It’s unfortunately complicated by the fact that there’s a winter storm rolling in. We anticipate putting more information out about that later this afternoon,” Linn said. “We do have a system devised to distribute those, but we do need to make sure that they’re going to be making it here before we make that promise.”
