A major power outage in Moore County, North Carolina Saturday night may be triggered by criminal activity, police said.
A spokesman for Duke Energy said that residents of Moore County were left without power at around 8 p.m. local time.
Crews responding to the incident detected “multiple equipment failures” at different substations adding that the misfunctioning at all the sites appeared intentional.
Nearly 39,000 residents were impacted by the “criminal occurrence” that is currently being investigated.
Another 3,000 customers of Randolph Electric Membership Corporation were also deprived of power.
The incident affected Moore Regional Hospital forcing officials to switch to generator power.
“The Moore campus is safely operating on backup generator power and we have not experienced any issues or concerns,” a spokesperson for the hospital said adding that power was not expected to be “fully restored” until 10 p.m.
