Exploding bulbs and fridges on the fritz reveal NC town’s fraying electric ystem ...Middle East

The Town of Red Springs owns and operates it electric utility, which has fallen into disrepair. (Photo: Lisa Sorg/Inside Climate News)

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RED SPRINGS —Early one evening this April, Kim Overstreet had just turned off the stove when she heard a boom. The panel box in the kitchen swung open and fuses shot out of their holders, bouncing off the fridge.

Less than a block away, Debra Duncan’s robot vacuum bolted off its charging station toward her, trailed by a blue flame.

In a home across the street, a light bulb exploded near a teenage boy, showering him in glass shards. “It frightened him so severely that he believed he had been shot,” one of his parents later wrote to town officials. It was the third power surge at the property in six months, they said.

These homes were among roughly 40 in Red Springs, a Robeson County town of 3,000, that were damaged by power surges on April 7. Residents lost appliances collectively worth tens of thousands of dollars: televisions, stoves and microwaves, washers and dryers, refrigerators, coffeemakers, HVAC systems, dishwashers, generators. Even surge protectors could not handle the voltage coursing through the electrical systems.

Officials with the town of Red Springs, which owns and operates its electric utility, have refused to cover the damages. They attribute the surge to the severe storms passing through that afternoon.

“We are deeming these losses as the result of Acts of God and were beyond the town’s control,” Town Manager Shanelle Harris wrote in an announcement on the Red Springs website April 17. “The power surges were not the result of lack of maintenance to the utility system or negligence. Our system meets modern, acceptable standards and the poles are annually inspected.”

Yet public documents and interviews show the Red Springs electric system is in disrepair. There isn’t enough money to cover major improvements, according to financial documents, in part because the town has used proceeds from its electric fund to float other government operations.

Red Springs is one of roughly 70 municipalities statewide that own and operate their own utilities. The town buys power from Duke Energy, but is responsible for the maintenance, improvements and operation of electrical lines, transformers and poles. It also sets rates and collects payments from customers.

Audits by the town’s accounting firm filed with the Local Government Commission, a division of the state treasurer’s office, reveal Red Springs routinely used customer payments deposited in the electric fund to fill gaps in the general fund, which covers day-to-day town operations, such as payroll.

State law allows municipalities to transfer those funds, but the amounts are capped, based on a percentage of the electric department’s gross annual revenues, or gross capital assets, for the previous year.

The state established those limits to “ensure electric funds are not being used to support municipalities’ general operations,” according to the town’s most recent audit.

In 2022 and 2023, the electric fund covered several months of health insurance premiums for some employees who did not work for the Electrical Department, including the town manager and the town clerk. The fund also covered a vacation payout for then-town manager David Ashburn when he retired in the spring of 2023.

“This practice has been stopped,” the town wrote to the Local Government Commission in response to the 2023 audit.

But a June 2024 audit showed Red Springs had transferred nearly $348,000 from the electric fund to plug holes in the general fund over the previous year. That amount was $101,000 more than the limit.

Since that audit, the town has reduced those transfer amounts well below the legal threshold, Red Springs’ Harris told Inside Climate News.

However, records show that even transfers within legal limits have significantly drained the electric fund.

The fund had an operating loss of more than $239,000 in fiscal year 2022, according to public documents. “This is largely due to the amount of subsidy provided to the General Fund, and inflation related to operating materials,” town officials wrote at the time.

In fiscal year 2021, electric capital reserves contributed $164,000 to the general fund; a second town account, the electric fund, transferred $176,000 to the water and sewer fund.

The storm and the power surges

Harris, who had been town manager for six months at the time of the April surges, wrote on the Red Springs website a storm with high winds caused electric lines to cross or “slap” at an intersection downtown.

A storm did pass through Red Springs that day. The first surge occurred at 2 p.m., and blew parts of Duncan’s meter base 10 feet, where they landed near an azalea bush.

Although the weather was calm, neighborhood residents said, a second surge occurred around 7 p.m., and destroyed their appliances.

Harris said the second surge happened when Duke Energy tripped a breaker at its substation. A Duke Energy spokesman told Inside Climate News that some of its Robeson County customers experienced storm-related outages at 2 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. after a tree fell on a line. He could not confirm whether a breaker had been tripped.

After the second surge, Overstreet said she called the town dispatch and told them she needed to speak to someone as soon as possible. Electric department workers then arrived at her home.

She and her husband noticed the wires leading from a pole to the top of the house had come loose.

“Every time we have an outage, it’s that transformer. They come out and fix it,” but the repairs don’t last, Overstreet said.

The Overstreets have experienced problems with the electrical system, and in one case, the town’s insurance covered it. In 2013, a voltage issue affected the fridge, Overstreet said. A receipt from that time shows the town paid $1,055 for “property damage.”

Harris also attributed the widespread damage to electrical problems within individual homes. When town staff replaced damaged meters, she wrote, “some customers were advised their homes had outdated meter bases that weren’t … properly grounded, old panel boxes or faulty wiring.”

Overstreet’s home was built in the 1940s, but she said her meter had been updated. Workers who came to the house after the surge did not go inside to check the wiring, she said, nor did they comment on the age of her meter.

The home next door that sustained three power surges was built in 2007. Duncan’s home is 42 years old, constructed in 1983. “I went through Hurricanes Fran, Matthew, and Florence, and nothing like this happened,” she said.

Property records show that with the exception of one historic home, the 15 damaged houses in east-central Red Springs were built between 1941 and 2019.

“We all had the same thing happen, no matter what year our homes were built or how good the wiring was,” Overstreet said. “We all had one thing in common: where we got our electricity.”

A former Red Springs employee told Inside Climate News that about half of the town’s transformers are capable of accommodating a higher voltage, but the rest are not. “It’s harder to get transformers for the lower voltage,” said the former employee, who asked not to be named because they still have connections to the town. “One of these days, it’s going to go down and not come back up.”

The former employee’s account matches comments Red Springs has provided to the Office of State Budget and Management. Two years ago, the town received a $1 million grant, half of which was supposed to cover electrical upgrades. To receive the funds, the town had to submit a scope of work document.

According to that document, “a much-needed electric utility upgrade is converting areas of town from 4 kVA power to 24 kVA power.”

A kilovolt-ampere, or kVA, is a unit of measurement that indicates the total energy supplied to an electrical system. When an energy load is unbalanced, equipment can overheat, fail, increase power consumption and degrade the overall performance of the system.

Red Springs would also “assess low-voltage areas and a full upgrade,” the town wrote, “and eliminate an obsolete substation and improve lines and infrastructure.”

The town received the grant in February 2025, according to an Office of State Budget and Management spokesperson, but has not yet reported any expenses.

The town’s electric fund is more solvent now because rate increases “provided significant revenues to the once-struggling fund,” according to a proposed town budget presented to the commissioners in early June. The budget calls for $210,000, within the legal limit, to be transferred to the general fund.

Earlier this month, Overstreet spoke before the town commissioners and told them the April 7 power surge could have been handled differently. “Even if you would have told us to give you a list of the things we lost, and to tell you what happened to us that day,” she said. “A little bit of respect and compassion goes a long way.”

The Overstreets did file a claim with their insurance company and received a small sum to replace the food in their burned-out refrigerator. A dryer also had to be replaced, but insurance did not cover that. Overstreet estimates the family has spent $5,000 out of pocket on new appliances and light fixtures.

“We pay the town, we entrust our safety to the town,” she said. “When I lay down at night, I used to feel reassured that they have my safety as their first interest. Now I don’t feel that at all.”

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