It's been a year since shooting attacks on two Moore County electrical substations left thousands of residents without power for days in freezing weather.
Investigators have made no arrests, but the effects still reverberate in the county and across the power industry.
One place the outage had immediate impact was the historic Sunrise Theater in downtown Southern Pines, which was staging a drag show fundraiser for Sandhills PRIDE when the outage occurred.
The LGBTQ group had held the event three times in another location without problems. But this performance attracted angry phone calls, social media posts, and a demonstration outside the theater, along with an even larger counter-demonstration.
“It seemed like everything was just going to go on as normal, and then, all of a sudden…the lights were out,” said the theater’s director, Kevin Dietzel.
The show was well underway, and dancers were about to join the Durham-based headliner, Naomi Dix, on stage. There was a moment of confusion before Dix began leading the crowd in an impromptu singalong by the light of their cell phones. The show ended early.
Given the timing, many in Moore County believe the attacks were a deliberate attempt to stop the show. Among them is Sandhills PRIDE Executive Director Lauren Mathers. She said the protests - and the suspicion about the substation attacks - have generated more support for her group.
“It brought to light some ugliness that people then started pushing back against,” she said.
New rainbow pride flags appeared around town, donations increased, and demand for the “safe space” trainings Sandhills PRIDE conducts for companies and other organizations jumped from three last year to a dozen this year. The group also staged its first street-fair-like PrideFest celebration and expanded its annual film festival at the theater.
“It was really a sense of unity that came about out of this horrific event,” Mathers said. “The people who were hateful didn't win with their hate.”
A year later, law enforcement seems no closer to identifying who was responsible for the attacks
Neither the Moore County sheriff’s department nor the FBI would talk about the case. But a written statement from Sheriff Ronnie Fields said investigators have “pursued hundreds of leads since the start of the investigation and continue to receive them,” and that they have interviewed hundreds of people. He noted there's a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
After the attacks, the investigators found about two dozen high-powered rifle shells at the scenes.
“Frankly, it's a type of attack of terror, and in a lot of respects, it's an intent to create mayhem and confusion," said Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks, who worked in Moore County throughout the outage.
The company initially referred to the attacks as vandalism, but he said the nature of the damage made it obvious this was something else.
“It became very clear very quickly that the individual or individuals who conducted this event knew what they were doing, that they were very intentional about the approach," Brooks said. "And so it was an attack on our system. And it was an attack on the infrastructure that supports the communities of our state. And that's a big deal."
A big enough deal that it prompted a new state law that makes damaging energy transmission equipment a major felony - with fines up to a quarter million dollars and prison terms of several years, and a big enough deal that the attacks were the central topic of a conference held by the nonprofit organization that regulates energy transmission.
Brooks said Duke Energy has boosted security at the two substations and taken other steps.
“We evaluated thousands of substations across the six states that we serve – we have more than 2,000 here just in the Carolinas," he said. "And we looked for opportunities to improve the physical and monitoring protections on our already multi-layered security strategy."
He said those layers can include physical barriers, electronic monitoring, mobile backup equipment, and so-called “self-healing” technology that can automatically sense a problem and reroute power to minimize the effect on customers.
That helps not just in cases like that in Moore County, he said, but also with more common causes of outages, like storms and vehicles hitting utility poles.
“The goal being to deter an attack or an incident whenever possible, but also recognizing that we can do everything right and still could have impact to our system," he said. "So that's why resiliency is so important."
Similar attacks in other states lead investigators to suspect extremist groups
While law enforcement hasn’t speculated on potential motives in Moore County, similar attacks in other states in recent years have led investigators to suspect extremist groups.
The first attack that grabbed the utility industry’s attention came in Silicon Valley, California, in 2013, when someone cut communication lines and did $15 million in damage to 17 transformers with more than 100 rounds from assault rifles.
No one has been arrested in that case. But in Ohio this spring, two white supremacists were sent to prison for conspiring to attack the power grid in hopes of sowing chaos and even starting a race war.
Larry Fitzgerald is with TRC Environmental, a consulting engineering firm that designs critical infrastructure, including substations and transmission lines.
He said extremists have been sharing information on how to damage the grid and how to get away with it.
“I’ve got manuals from different fringe groups that talk about the operational security aspect of leaving your cell behind and knowing ahead of time where cameras are placed and things like that,“ he said.
If you had to really increase security across all of the utilities' footprint, it would be pretty astronomically high. And so that's the calculus that utilities are going through.Larry Fitzgerald, TRC Environmental
Fitzgerald said the cost to protect a substation can reach into the millions of dollars, with special fencing, bullet-resistant equipment, enclosures, and an ever-increasing array of electronic systems including cameras and motion and gunfire detection systems.
In the case of one large site he knows of, the cost of the fencing alone was more than a million dollars. The costs are passed on customers — so power companies have to carefully weigh what makes sense for each site, he said.
“If you had to really increase security across all of the utilities' footprint, it would be pretty astronomically high,” he said. “And so that's the calculus that utilities are going through.”
There are tens of thousands of substations across the country. The security measures for the largest one or two percent are closely regulated because problems there could affect multiple counties.
Fitzgerald said the Moore County substations were just below the level where tough protection measures are required.
“There's an ongoing dialogue in the industry about that," he said. "We have clients who are below that threshold who are building in security anyway, perhaps in anticipation of future regulation or whatever."
He said people who sabotage the grid seem to give little thought to the potentially deadly effects.
“I don't know that they necessarily understand how they may ripple through things like hospitals not having power, drug manufacturers not being able to produce or distribute drugs," Fitzgerald said. "I think that gets kind of lost in some of this."
That was underlined in the Moore County outage. In August, the North Carolina Chief Medical Examiner ruled the death of 87-year-old Karin Zoanelli of Pinehurst a homicide. She used an oxygen machine that needed electricity.
That means whoever took the substations out of commission could be charged in her death. If they’re ever caught.
