From the 4 pm press conference, my notes (all white males presenting)
Schools, Duke Energy, State Senator and various police folks.
They promise to find the perpetrators. Reviewed the timeline and the evidence at the scene that there were firearms used to disable the equipment. Put LEO security at the substations.
Living in challenging times. Never thought would have to deal with this
Local, State and Federal folks working on this, Governor and the representatives will provide anything they can. They have a plan for the next few days they may be out of power. 9pm – 5 am curfew implemented.
Discussed the state of emergency and have opened their shelters. Moore County Sports Complex in Carthage.
County operations will likely be skeleton on Monday the ramp back up through the week.
Focus on the centrally located shelter with generator, Red Cross is helping with the shelter. If they have demand, they can open another. Generator power is a limitation for shelters.
Encouraged people to reach out to neighbors and support each other.
Duke Energy – first thoughts and prayers for those who are going to be cold without power. Reviewed the substations going down and the damage. No option to re-route power, so have to fix the substations. Pretty sophisticated repair with large equipment. Will take several days, may take until Thursday.
Working with the LEO to support their investigations, their priority is getting power back on. Their foundation is being tapped to support people during this.
Schools – Schools will be closed for students and staff on Monday, will take day by day moving forward.
State Senator – This was a terrible act, says they will prosecute and it was a deliberate attack. Discussed how they will protect and part of that is the need for the curfew, may be a several night. The roads are dangerous, people coming in on the highways that may not know what is going on.
Request from the sheriff that I you know something call them and gave the tip line number. Said the FBI and the SBI are working on this as well as the local LEO.
Q&A
Said so far have not tied anything back to the drag show. Confirmed the damage was done with fire arms. Discussed they are providing security. And there is help from the state at the substations and businesses. Didn’t confirm motivation, but said they were cowards. Confirmed they went through the gates to the substations. Said the feds would be the ones focused on the domestic terrorism angle. Confirmed this was a targeted act. Did confirm multiple shots, but not want to say more.
Discussed a looting incident in abereen, was a store while hooking up the generators to the refrigerators.
Confirmed the persons who did this knew what they were doing.
They talked about increasing penalties for messing with substations.
Duke back to answer questions. If they can partially restore with mobile tech they will try that, but there is the larger restoration that will take time. They will have to replace the damaged equipment even if there are work arounds for some people. They discussed that they have layers of security to protect the grid, can’t provide specifics, highly regulated and they follow the security requirements. This is part of the planning for outages like this.
They say some of the information on Facebook was false, and discussed the interview with the young lady that posted, but said it turned out to be nothing.