Fort Bragg power outage part of unannounced drill, base officials say

Fort Bragg conducted a training exercise Thursday that replicated how the base and community would respond to an attack that left the military installation without power.

Posted 1:40 p.m. Apr 25, 2019 — Updated 6:46 p.m. Apr 25, 2019

Gilbert Baez

, WRAL reporter

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Fort Bragg conducted a training exercise Thursday that replicated how the base and community would respond to an attack that left the military installation without power.

Officials conducted the drill without notifying members of the news media or other community groups about the exercise, which occurred at 4:30 a.m.

The base, home to over 50,000 soldiers and support personnel, issued a Facebook post about the outage but made no mention about the power loss being part of a planned military training event.

Around 11:30 a.m., the base issued a public statement about the exercise.

"Fort Bragg has been conducting an exercise to identify shortcomings in our infrastructure, operations and security by cutting power throughout the installation," the statement said. "Fort Bragg has to train for any possible threats to the installation in order to remain mission capable. This exercise was not announced in order to replicate likely real-world reactions by everyone directly associated with the installation."

During the outage, restaurants and commissaries on the installation were also affected.

And Womack Army Medical Center said it was operating under reduced capacity and certain appointments at all on-post clinics would need to be rescheduled.

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