Gov. Cooper update on Moore County power outages, criminal investigation

good to see you a little bit on the flash

Should be good

All right good afternoon

Everybody what happened here saturday night was a criminal attack

and federal state and local law enforcement are actively working

to bring those responsible to justice

I've been briefed regularly since this happened both on the

investigation and on the emergency management effort here to support

those who have been affected by the loss of power

Today I visited one of the substations that was attacked

and I want to thank the people who are working

so hard to restore power

It's very complex what they're doing and they've been working

around the clock to do that

I've met with the emergency management team here in moore

County and I've met with local state and federal law

enforcement to get updated on the investigation helping the vulnerable

people and the places where they live including adult care

homes is a priority

Making sure that people are warm as the night approaches

Making sure people are cared for making sure that critical

services at hospitals and law enforcement at emergency management services

or supported and available

All of that is crucial

Now while we are determined to keep people safe we're

also deeply concerned about the small businesses that are losing

out on valuable retail time right here before the holidays

as well as our school students who are missing valuable

class time because of closure of schools local and the

state response to all of this has been swift and

strong and I know that we'll all keep working until

the power is restored and do whatever we need to

do afterward as well

Will be important protecting critical infrastructure like our power system

must be a top priority

This kind of attack raises a new level of threat

We will be evaluating ways to work with our utility

providers and our state and federal officials to make sure

that we harden our in frustration our infrastructure where that's

necessary and work to prevent future damage

I will continue to get briefed on this investigation as

it continues and I'm sure that we will learn more

about motives of this intentional attack

An attack that damaged an entire community regardless of motive

violence and sabotage will not be tolerated

In the meantime I have been impressed with the resilience

and the community spirit of the people of moore County

I'm grateful for their public spirit and their help for

each other helping to serve meals to the people down

at the substation who are working on making repairs helping

each other in the community

And I am deeply appreciative of the first responders

The 911 operators uh the good work that they were

doing today in Moore County making sure they had all

of those positions uh filled with personnel who were handling

the load the law enforcement the people who are helping

with traffic with traffic likes being out the healthcare providers

the emergency personnel and others who are doing their very

best to get us past this

Have a number of people here who are with me

working from the state perspective Secretary Eddie Buffalo who is

the Secretary of our Department of Public Safety also have

Will Ray who is our Emergency Management Director from north

Carolina

Colonel Freddy johnson who was the head of our Highway

Patrol and of course share fields who has been working

diligently on this case since the beginning

He's here as well

And we have Jeff brooks from Duke Energy who is

going to give us a briefing here as well

First I'm gonna turn it over to Secretary Buffalo for

a word or two

Secretary Buffalo thank you Governor for your leadership sir

First of all let me say thank you to the

moore County Sheriff's Office

Sheriff Fields and to the moore County Public Safety Director

mr phillips for your extraordinary quick response in this event

And thank you all the public safety partners as the

governor alluded to

The North and the Department of Public Safety is fully

engaged

We're fully engaged with personnel and resources

We have the north Carolina State Highway Patrol the North

Clan Division of Emergency Management the alcohol law Enforcement

And of course our State Bureau of Investigation is assisting

the FBI as well as the moore County Sheriff's Office

to bring these folks to justice that did this unprecedented

uh event here in moore County

We're resilient here in moore County

I know citizens are helping you out Sheriff

We do ask those who have information that they contact

the moore County Sheriff's office to assist in this investigation

and we'll be able to bring these folks to justice

as the law requires

And governor alternate back over you sir

Now hear from Jeff brooks from Duke Energy

Thank you

Governor

Mr Secretary thank you as well for being here and

for the opportunity to give an update

Duke Energy continues to keep this community and our hearts

certainly as we work diligently to restore power uh for

the homes and businesses here in this area we recognize

how challenging these conditions are and we recognize that as

the days progress those challenges become more acute

So we take our jobs very seriously and are very

committed to serving you in this time

Um As a reminder we had about 45,000 customers that

were impacted by this uh incident here in in moore

County on saturday evening

Uh we have worked to make some progress as our

repairs continue

We were able to restore about 7000 customers last night

uh as we were completed some repairs on some of

the equipment that was damaged uh that work continues and

we have some repair past that we hope can can

potentially restore a few 1000 more

Uh but as we said yesterday we continue to to

maintain that for the majority uh this outage will continue

until we get those repairs completed and so we will

gradually see more recovery but we could still see this

extend uh Wednesday into thursday somewhere in that time frame

So just keeping those expectations you know transparent and as

you think about that obviously one message we say is

you know if you do rely on electricity for medical

needs our our local communities have offered resources uh that

you can take advantage of and and certainly we want

you to keep your family safe and the way you

need to be um we are working diligently to make

those repairs

In some cases equipment could be repaired in place and

that is a that's a good thing in other cases

that the damage was to the point that that the

equipment had to be replaced

And so we are working to get those those equipment

that we need here to get it into position understand

though that that it's not as simple as changing a

light bulb as it were

Some of this equipment does take you know a significant

amount of work a significant amount of process that goes

through putting into place safely getting it in service

But we are working in parallel on many paths to

make sure there is nothing that delays this return that

when one piece is ready to go into service the

grid is ready to receive it and we're ready to

restore your power incrementally as we go

Um We continue to partner with our local sheriff and

his agency as well as state and federal partners to

make sure that we are providing all the information that

is needed to be able to assist in your investigation

and we appreciate the resources

Uh we appreciate the support from the state certainly in

this as well

Uh resiliency is about community it's about more county it's

about the state it's about all of us working together

and Duke Energy is committed with this instance to make

sure that that we are getting our system back up

But we also remain committed to continuing to make the

the improvements that are needed on the grid to strengthen

the grid to make it increasingly resilient increasingly able to

uh to uh recover quickly when these types of outages

occur

So we will continue to learn from these situations

But obviously our focus right now is on recovery

We're also focused on helping the local community

Um we live and work in this community just as

as many of you do

And uh in addition to our crews working to restore

power

We have been on the ground here volunteering trying to

help out where we can speaking with local leaders and

local businesses to understand what are your needs

Um and as part of that uh we have announced

today that we're gonna make an initial commitment of $100,000

to this community to be able to help with some

of those community needs

Um we'll be working with organizations like the Red Cross

and other groups to to help help address where we

need to be

And it's just it's a way that that we can

do something as employees and as an organization to assist

even as we're trying to get the power back restored

Uh but we will continue to work until everyone is

back up

We appreciate your patients

Uh we you know this is a situation that has

affected us all but we will we will get through

this together and we will appreciate the opportunity to serve

you in this time

Thank you

So I've spoken with us District Attorney for the Middle

District Sandra hairston

Uh Mike Harden the district Attorney

Uh the FBI the FBI uh Sheriff Fields

Uh they were just meeting upstairs

I know that they are leaving no stone unturned uh

in this investigation to find those who are responsible

I know you had told me that there wasn't really

an update sheriff but if you would like to to

speak you certainly may thank you Governor and I just

want to thank you again for all the support uh

that you have given us through the state

I really truly appreciate that citizens of moore County appreciate

that

The only thing I may add is just our tip

line

We're working together with the federal and state agencies were

running all tip lines through the moore County Sheriff's office

and our tip line number is 910947 44 44

Any information or anything you hear please call that number

and we'll get back to you as soon as possible

Thank you so much

Take any questions that you might have

Yes about to share about the attack itself

A little bit about sort of what we know about

what firearms what

of the so I'm I'm not gonna get into the

specifics of the attack

I'm gonna leave that to the local state and federal

investigators

I know that they are working hard on this

I do know and they've said this publicly that this

was an intentional attack that caused significant harm to a

lot of people

The Sheriff wants to comment on that

They certainly can

Governor

I don't have anything further to comment

Uh we other than to say it was uh the

damage was done by farm and uh that's pretty much

all we want to elaborate as far as that was

it just the two substations shot and then the other

ones like failed due to stress on the system 20

Yes

So there was physical damage at two substations in the

area

And then you know that the effect of that ultimately

resulted in the larger outage that affected 45,000 which is

nearly all the customers that Duke Energy serves in Moore

County 45,000 customers

Individual people were affected

I don't have an estimate

But you're exactly right

Those are those are households and businesses

So you can imagine if a typical house has two

or three people in them

It affects far more than just the number of customers

that we mentioned through that count

Yes

Let me make sure I'm clear on the question

You are asking if if if the hurricanes recently is

that what you're asking or affecting the part Now in

this case it's more of a situation of of the

time it takes to to move those materials from from

either locally or but in some cases regional distribution areas

and locations to then install them in place

Um And and it would be more like perhaps the

comparison of of of changing a small thing like a

light bulb in your house versus your H Vac system

If you want to kind of get a sense of

of some some repairs are easier

Some repairs are more complex and there's a time associated

with those governor

Did these attacks happen simultaneously Or was one substation attacked

and then the other

Sure you want to answer that Uh that is still

under investigation and that's not been determined yet

Sheriff can you say more about what the word intention

The average person doesn't know station looks like the person

who did this acknowledge

well you handled it pretty well

The other day I will say this the individual uh

that done the damage knew exactly what they were doing

to cause the damage and caused the outage that they

did very basically security personal Wednesday

We're we're working with Duke Power here in the county

Uh and uh the Governor as well uh to make

sure that our substations here in the county and and

as well as across the state that they're looking at

all security issues with our utility company

Let me let me just respond to that

Uh I'm always concerned about critical infrastructure and I think

we certainly need to learn from this incident as to

what we may need to do because these kinds of

things cannot happen

I mean we cannot tolerate this type of wide power

power outage to so many people

And I know that I had a conversation with the

ceo of Duke Energy today Lynn Good

She is understands that as well

Uh we know that there may be some things that

that need to change to make sure that our infrastructure

is protected

The military involved in the investigation

Training soldiers

We we have been in contact with the Colonel over

in fort Bragg

They've offered all assistance with us with us uh to

formulate any investigative needs that we might need from them

Yes sir you all have any

I think the sheriff would want to say that that's

a matter of the investigation right here

Yes

And if you can the questions dealing with the investigation

what specifically happened I don't think you're gonna get very

many answers on that today

So what other questions might you have being investigated as

an act of domestic terrorism I think investigators are leaving

no stone unturned as to what this is

They are looking at every motivation that could possibly occur

here and they want to find the perpetrators

Yes

Right here the sheriff um for security reasons we don't

speak specifically about measures that we have at our at

our facilities

What I can say is that Duke Energy has you

incorporates multiple layers of security across its system to to

monitor and protect critical infrastructure

And uh we're certainly working with the Sheriff's office and

with law enforcement to provide any information that we have

that's available to assist their investigation

Any information governor about the shelter

Some people will work

help with this

I think they had 19 people who were there last

night and I think they were ready for most any

capacity

Will would you like to comment on that Okay

There was a similar incident back in 2013 in California

where a substation was shot up by people who clearly

knew what they were doing

So since then what has been done was anything done

to upgrade the security around the stations here

I would just say we learn from every incident that

security is always an evolving process and from those incidents

we took learnings from them incorporated them into our security

response plan

Uh We take information from our peers

We share information with with our trade organizations government uh

agencies and and it's a collaborative effort to stay ahead

of these types of challenges

Uh certainly that event provided learnings for for all of

the industry and was incorporated into into our responses

This question is for you also while you're out there

help

So you know as far as the equipment goes it's

more of a case of of getting that equipment in

place and getting it installed that takes time

Uh there's there's there's very you know deliberate processes that

go this is not a small equipment

This is this is big stuff

So that's really what's driving some of the timelines is

the ability to to have that equipment in place and

get there's not so much a supply you know issue

The second aspect of it is um substations have specialized

personnel that work on them that are trained to do

that

And we have those you know here in the region

that can do that

So unlike a storm where you know I know you've

experienced before we might bring in crews from out of

state or we might bring crews from other regions

This is a fairly localized incident that that you know

we just we have to get through the work process

It's not as much the scale of work as in

a storm where you might have uh you know thousands

of locations

So in some cases equipment could be repaired in place

In other cases it was damaged beyond repair and that

equipment then has to be removed other equipment brought in

and replaced

And when you consider what it takes to decommission that

equipment bring in new commission or equipment and commission it

there is a time factor involved in that

And that's certainly playing into the to the estimates that

we've we've provided to customers

Obviously security was a concern at the substations initially what

is being done now to secure them better even as

crews are still out there working

Well again one of the things that that we said

earlier our security model involves multiple layers and and so

um you've seen part of that in this in this

instance

But what I would say is that that we are

continuing to take information from this this incident it will

be incorporated into near term and long term planning

But uh we evaluate our security measures on an individual

basis when we look across the system and then we

have other measures in place

You know uh full time teams that do nothing but

monitor and respond to these types of things processes and

procedures all of that is working and in play here

So I would I would say that that physical security

is absolutely an important part of it

But there's many layers to that that are still in

place

You speak at all to the state of you call

this

And I mean I think for americans watching this story

all around the country right now it's a bit unsettling

to see how the infrastructure by a random group of

individuals on a saturday night

What does this mean for north Carolina Well we know

that our infrastructure is critical and one of our areas

of concentration lately has been cyber security

We know that massive damage could potentially be done uh

by the cyber terrorists who are located worldwide

So I I formed our joint terrorism task cyber Security

task Force

Sorry that helps us to plan and to prevent those

kinds of attacks

I know that with our power sector uh water infrastructure

uh there we know that potential vulnerabilities are there I

think that you will look at this this incident and

evaluate where we are not only with this but for

other infrastructure hoping to that this criminal investigation we can

determine what's going on and what the motivations are and

learn from that as well

Thank you guys for for being with us today

It's all right okay