ENC substation damaged by vandals last month

CARTERET COUNTY N.C. (WITN) - Thousands of people were without power last month after vandals damaged a substation in Jones County, according to officials.

WRAL reports that on Nov. 11, a Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative near Maysville had a substation damaged. The outage caused more than 12,000 CCEC members to be without power for about two hours.

“CCEC monitors its system constantly, and soon after the outage occurred, crews were dispatched to begin the restoration process and found that the Maysville substation had been vandalized,” officials said.

WITN is told that the vandals damaged transformers and caused them to leak coolant oil. The total cost of the damage is expected to be more than $500,000.

Authorities and citizens are on high alert for electric grid attacks as tens of thousands of people are still without power in Moore County due to substations there being shot up last weekend.