On Wednesday, a person started shooting close to a Duke Energy facility at Wateree Hydro Station in Ridgeway, South Carolina, according to CBS News.
Several sources claim that the person arrived outside the facility in a truck at about 5:30 p.m. ET before firing with what looked like a long gun, accelerating away. Several Duke Energy workers saw the incident. Nobody was hurt. It was unclear how many people were in the truck at the time.
According to a law enforcement official, shots were fired, as reported by CBS News. Duke Energy said it is “closely” collaborating with the FBI to look into the matter in a statement to CBS News.
A Duke Energy representative told CBS News, “We are aware of reports of gunfire near the Wateree Hydro Station in Ridgeway. We are collaborating closely with the FBI on this matter. “No one was hurt. No outages were reported. No known property damage at this time.”
We take this seriously, Kershaw County Sheriff Lee Boan told CBS affiliate WLTX-TV on Wednesday. Initial reports suggested someone opened fire near trees encircling the power plant, according to the sheriff. If the facility itself was the target was not immediately apparent.
About 400 people live in the small town of Ridgeway, South Carolina, which is situated 150 miles southwest of Moore County and across state lines. The hydro facility — which has been generating power for over a century — is located outside the town’s incorporated limits.
The incident occurs only a few days after a “deliberate” shooting in Moore County, North Carolina, which resulted in extensive power outages and gunfire damage to two Duke Energy power substations. If the Moore County blackout and the shooting on Wednesday are related is still unknown.
According to WLTX, the Kershaw County Sheriff’s Office dispatched officers to investigate the incident with assistance from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED).
The incident was reported to the Department of Energy.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement to CBS News that “The Department of Energy takes the security of our country’s power grid seriously and we work closely with industry to identify and address the evolving threats to the grid.”
“As power is restored in North Carolina, we’ll continue to work with law enforcement on this incident and any other threat to critical energy infrastructure. Those who commit these crimes to our Nation’s critical energy infrastructure will be held accountable.”
The Department of Homeland Security has not released any guidance linking this week’s incidents to extremism, despite a bulletin it issued in January, which CBS News obtained, warning that domestic violent extremists “have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target.” The secretary stated on Monday that the attack “appears to have been deliberate” in reference to the Moore County, North Carolina, power outage.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas stated at a gathering in Washington, D.C., “We are working with energy companies in local communities to address the situation impacting the power that reaches homes in the targeted neighborhoods.”
“The question is, is it an act of malfeasance or otherwise? Early evidence suggests that it was deliberate. And the investigation is underway.”
“The utility sector has a real problem on its hands,” said Brian Harrell, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at DHS. “Power stations are an attractive target and domestic terror groups know that destroying this infrastructure can have a crippling effect on industry, citizens, and local governments.”
The FBI continues to seek information about the person or persons who it said vandalized two Moore County electrical substations, turning off the lights for 45,000.
