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Melissa Harris-Perry: Last night, the overnight temperatures for Moore County, North Carolina hovered just above freezing, which was bad news for the more than 40,000 residents of Moore County who are still without power following an intentional attack on local power stations Saturday evening.

Some could be without power for days. Now, Moore County is home to the prestigious Pinehurst Golf Resort and houses part of the large US Army installation, Fort Bragg. Here's Moore County sheriff, Ronnie Fields, during a press conference on Sunday afternoon.

Ronnie Fields: We faced something last night here in Moore County that we've never faced before. Evidence at the scene showed that the firearm had been used to disable the equipment.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As of Monday morning, there are no suspects in custody but local and federal authorities are working together to address this unprecedented attack on vital infrastructure. I was joined Monday morning by Martha Quillin, staff writer for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. What do we know right now about the shootings at the substations?

Martha Quillin: We don't have a lot of information about the shootings. Only we know that at least two substations were attacked. We don't know how many people were involved. We think they were attacked in sequence, not at the same time, so possibly the same group of people hit one substation and then went to another. We don't really know. As you said, no one has been arrested. No one has been named as a suspect. We do know that the damage was extensive in the millions of dollars, and it's going to require some lengthy repairs that will require replacement of equipment, not just repairs to the equipment.

Melissa Harris-Perry: My understanding, again, I live fairly close here in North Carolina and been watching the local news developments of this. It is my understanding that the nature of these outages is really quite different than for example if you had a weather outage that caused some damage and that's part of why we're talking about so many days until power's restored.

Martha Quillin: That's right. It's different in two ways. One, the extent of the damage, a power substation is a pretty big facility. This is not like a transformer that somebody might hit in a traffic accident. It's not like a power line coming down in ice or snow, which you have a crew that goes out, they have equipment on their truck that they can make those repairs with. This is not that at all. This is a structure basically, this is part of the actual grid itself. To make permanent repairs, they have to bring in equipment to replace the equipment that was damaged or destroyed.

They're working on some maybe temporary repairs that they hope could get people up and running more quickly. That would be switched out I guess when permanent repairs can be made. I don't think most of those have been in place. I do know that the numbers are down a little bit this morning. At the height of it, I think we had 45,000 people without power and now we have about 33,000. The other thing that's different about it from a storm is that with a weather related event, in North Carolina, we're accustomed to that. We get hurricanes, we get the occasional ice storm, big snow sometimes, but mostly ice and big storms, and you can prepare for that.

You stock away supplies that you might need to get you through a few days, and in this case, people didn't have a chance to do that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Help folks who are not here in North Carolina to understand a bit about Moore County and who these residents are who are being affected by these power outages. I mentioned Fort Bragg. I mentioned the Pinehurst Golf club. Tell us a little bit about Moore County.

Martha Quillin: It's not a huge county, it's only got about 100,000 people, maybe 110,000 people, something like that. A couple of small towns that you would've heard of. Southern Pines and Pinehurst in particular because of the resort being there in Pinehurst. The part of Fort Bragg that spreads into Moore County is mostly just the reserve, which is the protected land that belongs to Fort Bragg. The base itself with the operations is in neighboring Cumberland County, but you do have a number of people who live in Moore County who work on the base. Moore County trends wealthier and quieter and older than most counties in North Carolina.

A lot of the military who live in Moore County would be officers. You have a lot of retired military who live in Moore County. Then the towns themselves are special really. Southern Pines and Pinehurst are tourists attractions, Pinehurst in particular. Southern Pines traditionally has housed a lot of the people who worked in Pinehurst. Then there are some smaller much more working class communities. Carthage is one of those that are support communities in some ways for the folks and the businesses in Pinehurst.

You have a lot of locally owned businesses in all of these places, little shops, and boutiques, and restaurants that serve the tourism industry. You've got a lot of service workers. It runs the gamut. The population there runs from poor to wealthy.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We heard from the sheriff on Sunday afternoon's press conference. He said quite clearly, neighbors are helping neighbors. We know that schools are closed right now. We know emergency shelters are open. What does that portend?

Martha Quillin: Well, I think it's the best preparations that you can make just as you would do for a hurricane when you don't know if you're going to take a direct hit and you're going to be in trouble for a day or two or for a week. I think they're just taking a lot of precautions. I don't know that it suggests that they know anything more than what they're saying. I just think they're being ready in case it takes a long time to get this power back up.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Got it. We're going to take a quick pause. We're going to write back on this story with Martha Quillin from The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. I want to talk to you a little bit about what we think may be behind this when we come back. It's The Takeaway.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We're back and continuing our conversation with Martha Quillin staff writer for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. We're talking about the shooting of power substations that have left tens of thousands without power in Moore County. Martha, I know that there are not currently suspects in custody and I don't want us to speculate too far but I do want us to think a little bit about some of the reports suggesting that this may have a connection to some residents being upset about a drag show that was due to be performed on Saturday. Can you tell us about the show and about the lead up?

Martha Quillin: Well, there was a protest over a drag show that was held Saturday night in a small historic theater in downtown Southern Pines. There was a protest on Saturday afternoon ahead of the show. There had been a lot of chit-chat on social media about trying to shut down the show. There were protestors outside the theater in the afternoon before the show went on and then the show did go on. There were supporters of the show who were out there as well and it was a peaceful protest. Nobody hurt anybody else. There was a lot of screaming as these things go. Then the show went on and then the power went out.

Then there was a lot of chit-chat on social media about why the power went out and whether there was a connection. Of course, no one has been charged, no one has been named, but there was what sounded like gloating and some claims that the power went out because God was chastising Moore County for allowing this drag show to go on.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I know there's at least one person, a woman, who was named because in that social media chit-chat, she said the power's out in Moore County and I know why. Now, clearly, one, that's simply social media posting and it could be, as you point out, that point of God is chastising the county, the town for allowing this. I'm wondering what we do know about whether or not she's saying she does or does not have some connection to this outage and whether or not it's connected to the show.

Martha Quillin: Reading her social media posts leading up to that and following the power outage, it sounds to me like she believes that this is God's way of chastising the county and that God used some people to do this, and that that's the way God works. She used the phrase 'God works in mysterious ways' and we've all heard that. I think that that is her position at this point. Not that she had anything to do with the outage or whether-- she has not said whether she knows who did that.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It certainly does suggest, even if it is not about the drag show at all, it does suggest a certain vulnerability of critical infrastructure. If a shooting and a sequential one could have this far-reaching effects, what are folks saying? Maybe Duke Power in particular about the security of North Carolina and more broadly, US infrastructure?

Martha Quillin: I think it does show how vulnerable we are. This took a lot of people down on-- took down their electricity pretty quickly and as the sheriff said, whoever did this, knew what they were doing so they knew what to shoot at within that structure to do the worst damage. We've all seen these power substations along the landscape as we drive through it. They're in rural areas, they're in more populated areas, they're all over the place. I think it's a reminder that we're all pretty vulnerable.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Martha Quillin, staff writer for The News & Observer. I know we're all hoping that our our neighbors, our friends, our communities get their power back as soon as possible. Thank you for joining us today, Martha.

Martha Quillin: It's been my pleasure.

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