By Steve Woodward
It was not Maui, or East Palestine (OH), or even the famous Moore County “Blizzard of 2000”, but The Pilot’s wide ranging “coverage” of a four-day electrical power outage that impacted 45,000 Duke Energy-enslaved households and businesses certainly did its best to embellish what befell the community one year ago, on December 3, 2022.
On the anniversary, readers of the December 3, 2023, Pilot Sunday edition, were greeted by thousands of words comprised of interviews with local citizens, elected officials and Duke Energy administrators. Editors might as well have given it a dramatic theme, perhaps, “Our Pearl Harbor”. Reflections on neighbors helping neighbors served the purpose of reminding readers that Americans are resilient and, generally, kind hearted. No harm in that, of course.
What was blatantly missing from the “special reporting” were tangible conclusions. If efforts by Pilot editors and reporters to fill up pages with endless column inches of text and photos were geared toward winning a comprehensive coverage award, it probably will succeed. Members of the media love patting one another on the back and handing out lucite “Best in Class” trophies.
But, overall, there was not much meat on the bone. On cue, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a thoroughly discredited agency, produced a photo of a minivan that was in the vicinity and whose occupants “may have information relevant to the investigation”. After all of the gnashing of teeth about who attacked two of Duke’s vulnerable power stations on the night in question, it would be most humorous if we learn that the culprit is a minivan-driving soccer mom who was off her meds after an ugly divorce, just needing to vent.
A Duke exec spoon-fed the newspaper with a pledge of $500 million allocated to grid security across four years. Yet, there are county officials who will confirm that they’ve seen no evidence of any significant upgrades to protect the local grid.
Rep. Richard Hudson (NC-09), who represents Moore County in the U.S. House, issued a statement on the anniversary of the blackout, purporting that he helped secure $1.6 billion to “bolster grid security”. It’s unclear what portion of that will actually trickle its way into the state. Hudson says he “introduced” (drafted) a bill to address supply chain factors that hinder utility companies from replacing damaged equipment in a crisis.
So what’s the point of revisiting December 3, 2022? With so little tangible progress to report, The Pilot obviously was eager to revive the narrative that a vulgar drag queen show at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines that same evening incited an overzealous Republican to lay down his Bible and pick up his hunting rifle.
Bang, bang. Lights out on the county and, thus, the drag show. God’s wrath symbolized by darkness. Such a tidy, handy narrative.
Various interviewees danced around the “connection”, frustrated no doubt that a perpetrator with a pick up truck equipped with gun rack and Confederate flag has not been caught and brought to justice. One who walked the line with a few toes slipping over it was Lauren Mathers, executive director of a nonprofit called Sandhills Pride. Referring to drag shows as “performances”, Mathers told The Pilot none were scheduled in in 2023 “out of safety”. The reporter might have asked, safety from what?
A Southern Pines business owner, Rachel Jurgens, could not resist re-stoking the power grid-drag show narrative, expressing to a Pilot reporter that she would “hate to think someone or a group of people had that much hatred in them to do such a thing.”
Perhaps if citizens are going to inevitably engage in hating, maybe it’s time to become more vocal in our hatred of the root cause of most disruptions of daily life — negligence. Earlier this year, 100 people on the island of Maui were killed amid intense wildfires ultimately linked to a negligent utility company and neglected vegetation. Among the 100, some were incinerated into dust.
In East Palestine, Ohio, last February, a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in the Ohio village. Saying they feared an explosion would ensue after 11 cars derailed, executives ordered workers to burn the toxic freight. Even now, the town of 5,000 has not recovered. Some residents moved away fearing contaminated drinking water and long-term health consequences. It was not until September, eight months after the incident, that the White House issued an “executive order” expressing concern about the “safety” of the people East Palestine, a town comprised mostly of Republican voters.
The author of the executive order, Democrat Joe Biden, has not visited the town to console its people. Not once. Maybe there is something worse than negligence. Arrogance.
Perhaps we’re seeing it in Moore County, in plain sight. What, other than willful arrogance, assigns a random power outage to the impulses of fringe radicals but does not, will not, address a serious threat and take responsibility to eradicate it?