It has been declared that there was a “deliberate attack” on two electric substations in North Carolina last weekend. The substations were shot and the power outages were reported to the police on Saturday, December 3rd, a little after 7 pm. Around 45,000 people were left without power in North Carolina, with the damage being beyond repair in some places. This terrible act is being looked into, and power is slowly being restored.

A state of emergency was declared in Moore County, with a curfew put in place. Wastewater pumps were out of order, schools were closed, traffic lights were out, and families did not have running water. People did not have heat, so they were using fires to warm themselves up. Even emergency shelters opened to people in need. There have been reports of houses going down to 55 degrees due to no heating. USA Today says, “This seemed to be too easy,” Cooper said after the meeting. “People knew what they were doing to disable the substation, and for that much damage to be caused — causing so much problem, economic loss, safety challenges to so many people for so long.” 

Over 45,000 customers lost power, and around 35,000 customers still didn’t have power on Tuesday, December 6th. Some equipment had to be completely replaced, while others were just being repaired. Duke Energy did things to give the people in Moore County “waves” of electricity for a few hours at a time. Thankfully due to the hard work of all the workers on Wednesday, December 7th most people had their power back. You truly don’t know how much a community relies on its power until it is gone. 

Answers to who did this and why have not been released yet, and there are still investigations going on. A theory going around was that the attacks were done to stop a drag show. The “Downtown Divas” drag show was going to be at Sunrise Theater Saturday night, and some people thought this attack on the substations was to stop this from happening. There had been protests against the drag show, as well as posts about the power outages that led people to believe this. Even so, there has been no confirmation that this is the reason for the substation attack and there are still investigations going on trying to figure everything out. There are rewards of up to $75,000 to anyone who can provide information concerning this attack that leads to an arrest. 

In just November there was vandalism done to a substation in Jones County leading to a power outage for 12,000 people that only lasted for a couple of hours. Authorities do not know if these attacks are related though. Hopefully, soon there will be more information on these attacks so everyone can understand why this was done.