At a news conference, a Duke Energy representative said that the lights should be back on for the tens of thousands of customers in central North Carolina who have been without power since two attacks on utility substations over the weekend.
Officials say that gunfire damaged two substations in Moore County on Saturday night. Investigators think that the attacks were “intentional” and “targeted,” and Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said that whoever shot at the substations “knew exactly what they were doing.”
Duke Energy has about 47,000 customers in Moore County. Since Saturday, the company has made “very good progress” and moved up its timeline for restoring power by one day, saying that most customers should have power back by late Wednesday.
Jeff Brooks, a spokesman for Duke Energy, said Tuesday afternoon, “That won’t happen all at once.” “Clients will come to you in waves. Some tens of thousands at a time.” He said that new equipment had been put in place, but it still needed to be calibrated and tested to make sure it worked with the grid.
Brooks said that as of Tuesday afternoon, about 35,000 people in Moore County were still without power. The attack was called cruel and self-centered by the mayor of Southern Pines.
Monday, Mayor Carol Haney said, “So many people are hurting.” The income has stopped coming in. It is very important if you have health problems. I think it is a terrible, terrible act of terrorism.” No suspects or possible reasons have been given.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Moore County Chief Deputy Richard Maness didn’t have any big new information about the investigation, but he did say that a tip line has been “very, very busy” in the last day. Tom McInnis is the North Carolina Senate Majority Whip. Moore County is in his district, so he told reporters he is looking into new laws to make the punishments for this kind of thing, which he said has never happened in North Carolina before.
Home Pharmacy Storage For The Pharmacist
Rob Barrett, the owner of Whispering Pines Prescription Shoppe, thinks he has enough gas to keep the generator running. However, the pharmacy has other problems: some employees don’t have gas to get to work, and there are communication problems.
The loss of electricity has also made it hard for people to get water in rural parts of the county.
Andrew Wilkins, whose parents own a farm in Whispering Pines, told, “Rural communities depend on electricity a lot more than people think.” “When the power goes out, many big cities don’t lose water, but many rural areas get their water from wells.
“My family gets water from a well, so when the power goes out, the well stops, the water pressure drops, and we slowly run out of water.”
I've been in contact w/ @DukeEnergy about the vandalism causing power outages for customers in Moore County, NC and the @DOE_CESER team is working w/ federal partners.
Law enforcement is investigating this serious incident and Duke is working around the clock to restore service.
— Secretary Jennifer Granholm (@SecGranholm) December 5, 2022
The mayor says that all the power went out in Southern Pines, a town of about 15,900 people about 40 miles northwest of Fayetteville and 70 miles southwest of Raleigh. Haney said she had to get her 98-year-old mother out of town and to Charlotte so she could be in a warm home.
Southern Pines Fire and Rescue says that since the power is out, the town’s water and sewage systems are running on generator power. Southern Pines Fire Chief Mike Cameron told that because the town doesn’t have traffic lights, there have been more car accidents and more fires as people try to find other ways to heat their homes.
Cameron also said that the fire department is getting more medical calls from people who use extra oxygen or other medical devices that need power. A backup generator powers the FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital in Pinehurst. But the hospital is putting off some elective procedures, and family medicine and other clinics in the country will be closed until power is back on, hospital officials said in a news release on Sunday.
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“An Evil, Illegal Attack On The Whole Community,c”
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said on Tuesday’s “This Morning” that investigators are “turning over every stone” to find out who did this. Both the FBI and state investigators are now working on the case.
Cooper said, “This was a cruel, illegal attack on the whole community that left tens of thousands of people in the dark.”
“Right now, our top priorities are health and safety, getting the power back on as soon as possible, and making sure that federal, state, and local law enforcement find out who did this and why, and bring them to justice.”
The Moore County Sheriff’s Office said that power went out in several places in the county just after 7 p.m. on Saturday. Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said on Sunday that the person or people who shot at the substations “knew exactly what they were doing.”
Fields said on Sunday that “no group has come forward to say or accept that they did it.” The sheriff said Monday that the police were trying to figure out if both substations were hit at the same time or if they were hit one after the other. Since Sunday night, the county has had a mandatory curfew from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Fields said the decision was made to protect residents and businesses.
The Country Needs To Have A Serious Talk About Protecting Its Infrastructure, Says The Governor
On Tuesday, the governor said that the state needs to learn from what happened. He said, “It’s not okay for this many people to be without power for this long.” Cooper told on Tuesday, “This is a retirement community, so there are a lot of adult care homes that don’t have power.” “We’re giving people here generators and other help to make sure they’re safe.”
Cooper said that the country needs to have “a serious conversation” about how to protect its most important infrastructure. Cooper said, “It was clear that whoever was firing the shots knew how to do a lot of damage and could do it at this substation, so we have to reevaluate the situation.”
Cooper said that officials are not saying if there were cameras at the two substations that were hacked because that is “part of the investigation that they don’t want to reveal at this time.”
Less than two weeks before the damage to the substation on Saturday, the FBI said there had been more reports of people with “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist ideology” making threats against electric infrastructure.
The FBI has heard that people with racially or ethnically motivated extremist ideologies are planning to attack electric infrastructure “to cause civil disorder and inspire more violence,” the FBI said in a November 22 bulletin to private industry that got a hold of.
Even though the reasons for the damage on Saturday are still not clear, US officials have always been worried about violent extremists’ interest in the country’s electric grid. Cooper said Tuesday that he knew the FBI had warned him.
“We have worked to organize and improve the way we protect our infrastructure, especially when it comes to cyber security. We know that these attacks can be big and cause a lot of people across the country to lose power, water, or other infrastructure, so we’ve been working on that,” Cooper said.
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