North Carolina power outage raises questions about grid vulnerability

WASHINGTON (TND) — By Tuesday afternoon, about 35,000 people in Moore County, North Carolina were still without power after shootings at two power substations. The governor of the state said it should prompt a national conversation about protecting critical infrastructure.

“There are thousands of these substations across the country and I think what happened here is going to cause us to reassess protection and hardening of infrastructure," Gov. Roy Cooper told CNN Tuesday, reiterating authorities' belief the attack was planned.

Just last week, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin detailing the "heightened threat environment" for terrorist attacks. Among the potential targets were critical infrastructure and the LGBTQI+ community.

Federal, state and local authorities are still investigating who's behind the attack and their motive. There are suspicions the attack was linked to threats of violence by far-right activists over a drag performance in Southern Pines, which is in Moore County. The Saturday show was scheduled for 7 p.m., the same time the substations were shot. Earlier in the day, protests were held outside the theater.

“I think that it has affected the queer community and instilling fear within not only the queer community but also just Moore County residents as a whole," drag artist Naomi Dix told WXLV.

Cooper said he expects authorities to investigate the potential link.

"We have to find out who did this and why and to bring them to justice but then we also have to look to the future as it affects our critical infrastructure," Cooper said.

Dr. Kyri Baker, an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder said she's not surprised people are starting to understand the vulnerability of the nation's power infrastructure, most of which she said was built above ground to maximize efficiency and accessibility.

“People didn’t really think about domestic terrorism being a threat to these substations," Baker said. "So it made sense to have them out in the open and just fenced off to prevent people from walking in or hurting themselves. This is something new that we’ve sort of seen more in recent years and in recent decades than initially when the grid was built.”

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency offers guidance for assessing vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure as part of the 2013 National Infrastructure Protection Plan.

As was first reported by The Daily Beast in January, the DHS issued an intelligence bulletin that said domestic violence extremists and racially motivated extremists identified the electric grid as an attractive target because of its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors.

Baker said making power infrastructure like the substations shot in North Carolina more resilient is possible but wouldn't be easy or cheap.

"It would basically require you know, a re-haul, an overhaul of a lot of the different parts of the grid that we previously thought were fine," Baker said. “We could do some basic things like improve security around the substation perimeter. You know, instead of just a fence you could have a concrete wall and still have some of the benefits of having accessibility and not modifying the infrastructure too much.”