Damaged industrial equipment, booby traps, incendiary devices and blockaded roadways — RCMP Chief Superintendent Warren Brown thought he had seen it all from protestors and activists during his time overseeing the north district of the province of British Columbia, but Thursday’s attack on a Coastal GasLink pipeline site was something different.
“I would say this is probably so far the most direct and most immediate-type threat to people’s safety,” Brown said in an interview.
“When workers are sitting in vehicles and they are being attacked by these assailants swinging large axes, smashing the windows, hitting the vehicle when (workers’) bodies and heads are just feet away, having torches thrown at their vehicles and (in) the boxes of their vehicles that could compromise their lives — this has gone way too far.”
One day after the attack at a remote drilling site near the Morice River and investigators are reviewing security footage and interviewing about nine Coastal GasLink employees who were present at the site shortly after midnight when 20 or so masked people, some of them brandishing axes, allegedly attacked security guards and threatened workers with flare guns in what police described as a “coordinated attack”.
Millions of dollars of damage was also done to heavy equipment and trailers. Police believe the attackers commandeered equipment at the site to damage other machinery and demolish buildings. The attackers also cut equipment hydraulic and fuel lines, causing significant leaks.
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Domestic terrorism hmmmm. Perhaps the playwrites of the legacy media can spin this to the right but that would be typically gauche.