WWAY speaks to Brunswick Electric and Duke Energy on security measures in place after Moore County blackouts

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, NC (WWAY) – During the peak of the Moore County outage, more than 40,000 people were left in the dark, with power outages lasting for days causing concern this could happen again.

WWAY talked to spokesmen for both Duke Energy and Brunswick Electric, and they tell us security is always their number one priority – and continue to re-evaluate and improve continually.

According to Brunswick Electric Membership Corporation spokesman Brookes Versaggi, they received a few calls from worried customers.

“Safety and security are our is always a top priority for our members and that includes securing our substations,” he said.

Security measures have been put in place to protect critical infrastructures such as their substations throughout the county, which include fencing, barbed wire, and cameras that are monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks is with the electric company whose substation equipment was damaged in the shootings over the weekend and said the company will evaluate the security of its locations across the state, including here in the Cape Fear.

“We will continue to learn from this and we will take these learnings and help it to further improve security strategy and as an industry, we do look and plan for these types of events,” said Brooks.

The events normally involve the weather or crashes that result in downed power poles or lines, not sabotage, according to Brooks.

Duke Energy has been working on an extensive over hall of the grid system in our region for the past two years.

“It’s been going on in the Cape Fear to help make the grid stronger to help make it more resilient,” he said.  “We’ve been upgrading poles, all of that adds to those layers that we talked about, that help to protect our critical infrastructure.”

Brunswick Electric Membership Corporation is also evaluating its process, according to Versaggi.

“Electricity is obviously vital to so many things, and in everyone’s everyday lives,” he said. “That’s why we constantly evaluate and review our security protocols to ensure that nothing like this will ever happen here.”

Versaggi said their substation has capabilities in place to reroute electricity to keep the flow of power to homes to avoid interruption of service.

Both Versaggi and Brooks urge the public to report any suspicious activity near substations or vandalism to power lines and/or poles.