FBI probes a gun attack on a power grid in Moore County

• After shots were fired at two power plants in North Carolina, the FBI is looking into what happened.
• Schools will be closed for a second day in a row on Tuesday because a state of emergency has been declared.
• As part of the emergency declaration, the whole county is under a curfew that will end on Friday afternoon.

In North Carolina, two power plants were destroyed by gunshots, leaving tens of people in the dark. The FBI is now looking into the incident.

Since the incident on Saturday night, no motive or suspect has been named, but authorities have claimed it was an intentional act.

According to officials, 35,000 people in Moore County are currently without electricity, and repairs might take several days.

Tuesday will see a second consecutive day of school closures due to the state of emergency that has been issued.

A county-wide midnight curfew is part of the emergency declaration, and it will end on Friday afternoon.

According to North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, securing critical infrastructure must be a “top priority” since “this kind of strike creates a whole new level of concern.”

The two substations are about eight kilometres (five miles) apart, and in one instance a gate was opened to gain entry to the facility.

At a press conference on Sunday, Sheriff Ronnie Fields stated that “the individual, or persons, who did this, understood exactly what they were doing.” “We have no idea why Moore County was chosen as a target.”

He added that someone pulled up and “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the second one,” and that the FBI was collaborating with local officials to find the offender.

It wasn’t accidental, he claimed.

According to officials, because of the serious damage to the two substations, it might not be possible to restore power until Thursday. The original number of people impacted by the outage was around 45,000.

At the press conference, Jeff Brooks, a representative for the nearby electricity provider Duke Energy, said, “We are looking at a really intricate repair with some fairly heavy equipment and we do want inhabitants of the town to be prepared.”

When the electricity went out, there were many traffic incidents, including a four-vehicle pileup, according to fire chief Mike Cameron. According to him, the stop lights being out was the sole cause of the car accident, as reported by the Charlotte Observer.

Water and sewage services are also powered by backup generators, and a large hospital switched to generator power.

Copies of attacks are a concern for federal officials. White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby stated that officials in Washington were closely monitoring the investigation’s developments.

On Monday morning, the county created an emergency shelter at a sports centre for individuals in need as temperatures dropped to a low of 32F (0C).

According to the local newspaper The Pilot, grocery businesses in the area were open and using generators on Monday.

The newspaper stated that some local eateries were donating perishable products because their freezers had broken down.

Officials say opening decisions will be decided on a day-by-day basis, so it is unclear how long schools in the county would be closed.

Sheriff Fields addressed social media rumours that the vandalism was an effort to prevent a drag show from happening, despite the fact that no suspect has been named and the motivation for it is unknown.

He said that “investigators” had been unable to connect anything to the drag show. The event was slated to start at 19:00 on Saturday, which also happened to be when the power went out.