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Resident urges Harnett County to plan for electromagnetic-pulse and prolonged power loss
Summary
During public comment a resident warned of risks from prolonged grid failures and electromagnetic pulses (EMP), urged county emergency services to plan for transformer and vehicle vulnerability and asked the county to inform vulnerable residents about survival steps.
A Harnett County resident told commissioners on June 16 the county should plan for manmade grid losses including electromagnetic-pulse (EMP) events and strengthen local emergency preparations and public information.
The topic matters, the speaker said, because electricity is central to emergency services, health-care needs and daily life; prolonged outages would particularly affect seniors, people with medical needs and low-income residents, he said.
Larry Mitchell, speaking during the public comment period, said electricity powers 911 centers, the sheriff’s office and hospitals and that an EMP or other manmade event could render transformers and vehicle electronics inoperable. “If we have an EMP … it could be down for 3 days, it could be down for a month, or it could be down for years,” Mitchell said. He told commissioners that transformers are expensive, often manufactured abroad, and take a long time to replace.
Mitchell suggested the county consider devices that can protect emergency vehicles from EMP effects and asked emergency-management staff to develop public guidance for prolonged grid failures. “We need to look at that in our emergency services in these manmade, disasters, short term and long term,” he said, and urged the county to “inform the public what to do when the grid goes down.”
The county did not take any formal action on the comment; commissioners acknowledged the remarks and emergency-services materials on harnett.org but did not adopt new policy during the meeting.
The comment is recorded in the public record and may inform future conversations between the board and county emergency management about resilience planning and outreach to vulnerable populations.
