PINEHURST, N.C. — The FBI is assisting Moore County law enforcement in trying to figure out who deliberately damaged two Duke Energy substations, knocking out power for tens of thousands of customers.
Many places, like the Pinehurst Fire Department, are opening their doors to the community who may need a warm place to sit or even an outlet to charge their phones. People have been in and out of the fire station all day to take advantage of this charging station.
According to Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields, multiple gunshots took down two Duke Energy substations Saturday night, leaving more than 37,000 Duke Energy customers without power.
A lot of those customers live in Pinehurst.
WFMY News 2's Amber Lake spoke to a Pinehurst neighbor as well as the mayor about how everyone is dealing with the outage.
"Those things are important, and the residents get to see each other, so, unfortunate that it takes kind of something of an event like this to get people to kind of come together, but it has happened here and that's kind of what the community is doing," said neighbor Steve Johnson.
Pinehurst mayor John Strickland said their main concern is getting the power back on for folks.
"A lot of folks are at home with no power at all and there have been a lot of individuals that do have power in their home from generators and they are sharing that with their neighbors on either side when they possibly can," Strickland said.
The power outage is affecting many traffic lights as well.
Moore County is under a curfew between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. in order to prevent accidents on the roadway.