As Moore County spent days in the dark, residents sought to share the light of hope

On the blackout’s third day, Darlene Kiser pushed her Food Lion cart uphill along the main street in Carthage, collecting snacks and donated water from the town’s only grocery — where the lights had just flickered back on.

A 67-year-old retiree, Kiser spent the previous night huddled around a hurricane lamp and a gas stove, trying to keep warm in near-freezing temperatures. She had this message for whoever shot out Moore County’s electrical substations:

“Why in God’s name would you want to pick on old people?”

Moore County, which made headlines worldwide after a devastating attack on its power supply, is home to just 102,000 people — fewer than Cary.

The world knows Moore County thanks to Pinehurst, a top-notch golf community that hosts the U.S. Open. But few see the tin-roof mobile homes that stand a few miles away. And few who visit from out of state ever sample the chicken gizzards in Robbins.

Yet regardless of where they live, everyone in Moore spent many days in the dark.

With no suspects arrested yet, they questioned out loud why anyone, regardless of motive, would target 45,000 households in their mostly rural community — the sort of place where locals buy collard greens from a produce stand and rave about the banana pudding at Ronnie’s Chuckwagon.

But in the early hours of crisis, coffee shops passed out steaming cups of java and plates of waffles for free, running the pots on 5-kilowatt generators. Churches formed committees to cook hot dogs and chicken strips, passing them out to all comers. The NC Baptist Men hauled in trailers with hot showers and laundry, and volunteers made beef stew in vats the size of hot tubs.

And while residents kept each other warm and fed, they tried to stay positive — mostly succeeding.

“Back in the days when you had public hangings in the courthouse square,” said Kiser, rolling her cart through Carthage, “you didn’t have stuff like this.”

‘It’s a crazy time’

Almost squarely in the middle of North Carolina, Moore County sits neatly between Raleigh and Charlotte, influenced by neither but drivable from both. One geographic feature that sets Moore apart is its close proximity to Fort Bragg, the largest military post in the nation and home to the 82nd Airborne and the headquarters of the Army’s Special Forces.

Having such a neighbor means all sorts of people moving through your community, coming from all sorts of places with all sorts of expertise. The Baptist church in rural West End opened its doors to families in the cold, including Leilani Tedtaotao, a native of Guam whose husband serves in the Green Berets.

As her 6-year-old ate chicken nuggets and drew black holes on a pad, she wondered out loud about how circumstances combined to place her family in national news.

“It’s a really strange way to put the county on the map,” she said. “I’m trying really hard not to get too deep into the rumors. It could be anything. There’s a lot of wannabes. It’s a crazy time. I’m really hoping it’s not something political. Maybe they did it without meaning to, not knowing how big it would be, and then backed off.”

Any Moore County resident knows about hurricanes and ice storms and the blackouts they bring.

But this one hits differently.

“When a storm comes, it’s pretty much a neutral pain,” said Ryan Peterson, pastor at Grace Church in Southern Pines, whose members donated generators and hundreds of home-cooked meals. “It’s a little bit easier to blame a storm that just comes and goes” than to know all this aggravation was caused by another person, maybe even one they’ve waited in line with at the grocery store.

Hot dogs for everyone

On a normal day, Michel Andrade Mendoza would be selling tres leches cake and Mexican sweetbread at Lupita’s Bakery, the family business in Pine Bluff.

But Lupita’s lost power in the outage, so the family set up a folding table and a grill outside the darkened bakery. Mendoza made barbecue at home in nearby Richmond County and brought hot dogs and chips to anybody hungry, shrugging off his own misfortune.

“If I’ve got power and can do something, I’m going to do it,” he said. “You get losses sometimes. You get wins sometimes.”

This scene repeated itself thousands of times around a small community in crisis.

In Carthage, Food Lion passed out cases of water from the back of a tractor-trailer. In Whispering Pines, Yates-Thagard Baptist Church prepared a free Mexican dinner. Crains Creek Fire Department brought in hot dogs for lunch and chicken gumbo for dinner.

Dale Lambert, the CEO of Randolph Electric cooperative, recalled in a news conference that members who had power 40 miles away offered to cut back if it might help the 2,000 plus in the dark. While Randolph was arranging food for its crew, a man walked up unannounced and laid a $100 bill on the table as a donation.

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“This gentleman was out of power,” Lambert said, marveling at the gesture.

The blackout struck Saturday just as much of Moore County was shutting down a day of celebration, with lights twinkling red and green from Carthage to Cameron.

At Johnson Family Produce, owner Samuel Johnson had a busy Saturday serving home-grown collard sandwiches while children scurried around to meet Santa Claus, who arrived on a tractor.

A few hours after he closed up shop, his stepson-in-law happened to drive past and notice that the Christmas tree out front had gone dark. He called Johnson back with a generator. Inside the shop, $10,000 worth of fresh sausage, cheese and milk might otherwise have gone bad.

“We’re just a small farm,” said Amanda Ray, Johnson’s stepdaughter. “We could have lost everything. Whoever did this probably didn’t think about people like us. They didn’t think about older people who might not have anything at home and can’t get out.”

‘Return good for evil’

But as the power came back Wednesday, she offered this reassurance.

“If this ever happens again,” she said, “I would like people to know that I would personally bring them produce if they need it. A blanket. Anything.”

In a county with so few people, rumors inevitably spread and accusations unavoidably flew.

The attack, being deliberate and malicious rather than the random work of nature, stoked a smaller but still comparable fury to that felt in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

County Commissioners Chairman Nick Picerno did not appear to be joking when he said, “Whoever the perpetrator is, I hope they turn the power off in the cell they put you in.”

But even in the dark, in the cold, the first flash of anger gave way to something stronger.

“It’s easy to focus on the vandalism, on the bad decisions people have made,” said Peterson, the Grace Church pastor. “But if we respond with a whole lot of good, it brings light to the darkness. That’s what God has called us to do: return good for evil.”