A weekend shooting attack on two electric substations in Moore County, North Carolina, is raising questions about grid security in the United States, after 40,000 people—including seniors and people in need of medical care—lost power amid freezing winter temperatures.
“It clearly indicates that we’re still vulnerable and we haven’t taken sufficient action to address the vulnerabilities,” said Jon Wellinghoff, a former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees rules governing the grid.
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Government and industry have focused on protecting grids from cybersecurity threats and extreme weather, but the power outages—which remained for around 9,000 residents on Wednesday afternoon—are a reminder that physical attacks can still endanger grids, writes Politico.
Authorities have not yet identified the perpetrators of the attack nor discovered the motive. There’s been some speculation that it may have been linked to protests against a local drag show, along with callbacks to past attempts by white supremacists to disrupt the grid as a prelude to a race war. The shootings occurred on the night of Saturday, December 3, and by Monday, the FBI had joined the investigation, reports The Guardian.
With temperatures in the area falling to around 4°C, the loss of power is affecting residents who have no alternatives for heating or cooking. Sports complexes and libraries have been offering shelter, heat, and food, but the power loss is especially dangerous for anyone who’s vulnerable based on age or medical condition, the New York Times says.
Gun attacks on substations are rare, but the transformers that were targeted are a critical vulnerability in the power system, EnergyWire explains. Regulators have not taken major action on this type of threat since a 2013 gun attack at a high-voltage substation in Coyote, California. Back then, FERC set new standards for electrical infrastructure security, including shielding high-performance transformers. The North Carolina substations fall below the voltage threshold for those requirements. But even if they were covered, the mandated precautions would have done little to prevent the attacks, though they may have lessened the impact, Politico says.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper is calling the incident a “criminal attack” and vowing to find the culprits and think about preventive measures, reports CNN.
“We need to look forward, to look at how we can harden our electrical grid and make sure that our power sources are protected,” Cooper said. The system “can’t be this vulnerable that someone with knowledge of how to disable the electrical system could come in and actually do that in a very short amount of time.”
