Florida, Georgia, and Virginia Join North Carolina in Declaring State of Emergency After Colonial Pipeline Shutdown
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On Monday, Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina declared a state of emergency after the Colonial Pipeline hack over the weekend resulted in a shutdown of the largest pipeline for fuel on the east coast.
Late Monday night, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia followed suit, declaring a state of emergency there. On Tuesday, it was announced that both Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have likewise declared emergencies as, across the southeast, lines stack up and stations have already begun to run out of fuel.
Military bases, too, are taking action, including setting purchase limits on fuel fill-ups.
The declaration from DeSantis, the most recent, has language reflecting what each of the states has put out. It says that the interruption in pipeline operations “poses a significant and immediate threat to the continued delivery” of essential fuel products, and that the “sudden and unexpected closure” and and disruption of the supply of fuels “poses a severe threat” to the state.
Moreover, in the states that have issued emergency declarations, price-gouging laws go into effect, a move that the Governors and Attorneys General believe is important to prevent prices artificially skyrocketing. South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson declared an “abnormal disruption in the market” in his state, likewise putting the price-gouging statute into effect.
A lot of the individual gas station outages and lines are being attributed to the panic of customers anticipating more widespread unavailability of fuel. There are, though, logistical delays with the pipeline out of commission, which can cause temporary shortages or outages as fuel is brought in from other locations. With about 50% of the east coast’s gasoline, natural gas, and diesel coming through the Colonial pipeline, the prospect of a wider problem does loom if the company cannot get back up and running quickly.
The cyberattack on the pipeline involved ransomware, which is exactly what it sounds like: hacking a system and holding it for ransom money. Colonial Pipeline has said they hope to have it back up by the end of the week, or optimistically even by Wednesday night. Meanwhile states and local economies are praying that it doesn’t go into a second weekend.
