As power is being restored to Moore County, N.C. homes, schools, hospitals and businesses, the FBI is seeking more information about the nature of the attacks, and security and energy firms are focusing even more on how to better protect the nation’s power grids.
According to a report from Fox NewsNation, the federal government has warned of attacks on substations in Washington and Oregon recently similar to the gunfire that damaged the infrastructure in North Carolina last week.
Fox NewsNation obtained a federal law enforcement memo warning, "Power stations in Oregon and Washington have reported physical attacks on substations using hand tools, arson, firearms and metal chains possibly in response to an online call for attacks on critical infrastructure."
The memo said the aim is "to cause widespread power failures with the potential impact of social disruption and violent anti-government criminal activity.
"In recent attacks, criminal actors bypassed security fences by cutting the fence links, lighting nearby fires, shooting equipment from a distance or throwing objects over the fence and on to equipment."
The U.S. Department of Justice in February also received guilty pleas from three men accused of plotting to shoot substations or power grids, with powerful rifles.
The FBI said the defendants were White supremacists and expected the damage would cost the government millions of dollars, lead to power being out for months and evoke civil unrest and potentially a race war prompting the next Great Depression.
Pleading guilty in this case were Christopher Brenner Cook, 20, of Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of West Lafayette, Ind. and of Katy, Texas; and Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wis.
They each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.According to court documents, in fall 2019, Frost and Cook met in an online chat group. Frost shared the idea of attacking a power grid with Cook, and within weeks, the two began efforts to recruit others to join in their plan.
Dying for their mission
As part of the recruitment process, Cook circulated a book list of readings that promoted the ideology of white supremacy and Neo-Nazism. By late 2019, Sawall – a friend of Cook’s – joined the conspiracy and assisted Cook with online recruitment efforts, operational security and organization.
As part of the conspiracy, each defendant was assigned a substation in a different region of the United States. The plan was to attack the substations, or power grids, with powerful rifles. The defendants believed their plan would cost the government millions of dollars and cause unrest for Americans in the region.
In February 2020, the co-conspirators met in Columbus, Ohio, to further discuss their plot. Frost provided Cook with an AR-47 and the two took the rifle to a shooting range to train.
Frost also provided Cook and Sawall with suicide necklaces during the Columbus meeting, prosecutors said. The necklaces were filled with fentanyl and were to be ingested if and when the defendants were caught by law enforcement. Both Cook and Sawall expressed their commitment to dying in furtherance of their mission.
Upon arriving in Columbus, Sawall and Cook purchased spray paint and painted a swastika flag under a bridge at a park with the caption, “Join the Front.” The defendants had additional propaganda plans for their time in Ohio, but they were derailed during a traffic stop, during which Sawall swallowed his suicide pill but ultimately survived.
Unclear if cameras helped
Duke Energy said it was taking a closer look at security measures after the breaches at substations but declined to go into detail about whether security cameras captured the incidents.
Moore County sheriff’s deputies said the investigation into the damage is moving quickly thanks to numerous calls to its tip line, which is 910-947-4444.
The FBI released a poster seeking information and promoting the tip line. People can also submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov, or contact a local FBI office or the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate.
On Tuesday, Gov. Roy Cooper told reporters that law enforcement was “leaving no stone unturned in this investigation,” but revealed no specifics. Both the FBI and nearby Fort Bragg are involved.
“Looking at all of the information, this is a very thorough investigation — federal, state and local all coordinating,” he said.
The governor also said that they need to “assess where we are on our critical infrastructure. I know that there are a number of federal requirements that utilities have to abide by. But this seemed to be too easy.”
At least one state lawmaker, Moore County Republican Sen. Tom McInnis, said the legislature will look at updating state law to devise penalties that fit the crime, the Fayetteville Observer reported.
Despite temperatures near freezing at times, no confirmed deaths have come due to the outages, Moore County emergency officials report. One fatality in a home without power is still being investigated and may be unrelated to the outages.
Moore County Schools are expected to be closed to students through Thursday, and a curfew remains in effect.
Lights Coming On
Meanwhile, power continued to be restored Wednesday in Moore County to households and businesses that lost it, including the hospital in Pinehurst and some homes in Carthage. Power returned to the 402-bed FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital around 9 a.m. Wednesday, said Gretchen Kelly, a spokesperson for the hospital.
Since the widespread power outage started after an attack on two electrical substations, the hospital has been operating on a backup generator. The hospital is now in the hours-long process of transitioning from generator power to full power.
While the attacks initially struck 45,000 customers and their families, Duke Energy had whittled that number down to 23,000 by Wednesday morning.
The smaller Randolph Electric Membership Cooperative also lost power to roughly 2,600 homes, and has been doing “rolling power-ups” throughout the week — giving families a few hours of electricity at a time.
Duke Energy said it had completed work on the damaged substations and hoped to have most power restored Wednesday before midnight.
“All substation equipment damaged from recent vandalism has either been fully repaired or replaced,” the company said on its outage website Wednesday. “Once we have completed all necessary testing, the gradual restoration of service to those Moore County communities still without power will begin. To avoid overwhelming the electrical system we will bring power back on gradually, with the goal of having the majority of customers restored before midnight tonight.”
The Tribune Content Agency contributed to this report.
