"Targeted" Attack on Power Grid Leaves NC County in the Dark

Facts

• On Sunday, authorities announced that at least 40k people in Moore County, NC were left without power after two power substations were damaged by gunfire. Duke Energy, the power supplier, said that power may not be fully restored until as late as Thursday.
• County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said a suspect(s) breached security fencing and opened fire, disabling the facilities and causing the outages. The County declared a state of emergency and imposed a 9 pm to 5 am curfew, also closing schools on Monday and creating a shelter for residents who require electricity for medical equipment or heating.
• The Sheriff's Office, in coordination with agencies such as the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the FBI, is investigating it as a "criminal occurrence." Fields said, "it was targeted, it wasn't random.," adding, "the person, or persons, who did this knew exactly what they were doing."
• North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said in a tweet, "I appreciate the swift response from local and state emergency responders...an attack like this on critical infrastructure is a serious, intentional crime and I expect state and federal authorities to thoroughly investigate and bring those responsible to justice."
• Some have speculated that the incident was in response to an LGBTQ drag show being hosted by Sandhills PRIDE in the area. The group said they received violent threats ahead of the event but none indicating a planned attack on the power grid.
• Until the outage can be resolved, local law enforcement is alerting residents to stay off the roads if possible, and if not to treat all intersections as four-way stops for safety.

Sources: CBS, NBC, CNN, New York Times, and FOX News.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Occupy Democrats. It would be foolish for authorities not to look into a local right-wing group that celebrated news of the attack. The founder of the Moore County Citizens for Freedom, whose members are known to have attended the January 6 riots, applauded the power outage as an act of God to stop the local drag show. These extremists must be investigated.
• Narrative B, as provided by Finance. Instead of pointing fingers while the investigation is still ongoing, more must be done to put preventative measures in place. Though rare, attacks like this show how vulnerable power grids still are in the US. The government must focus on building walls so gunmen can't aim directly at transformers and circuit breakers, and establishing a national response so that state and local authorities aren't left alone when their jurisdictions are attacked.