75,000 still without power in northwest Indiana, outages may last until Aug 25

A utility worker repairs overhead power lines from a bucket truck boom lift near a utility pole, while other laborers assess a damaged rooftop in the United States. (Photo: @theinformant_x)​​​​​

Eight days after severe storms swept through northwest Indiana, about 75,000 customers of Northern Indiana Public Service Co (NIPSCO) were still without power late Wednesday afternoon.More than 20,000 were in Gary, a city in northwest Indiana’s Lake County, where full restoration is not expected until Aug 25, reported news agency Associated Press.Lake County, along the Illinois border, accounted for most of the remaining outages. As repair crews worked around the clock, residents returned to community centres in Gary for hot meals and to charge their phones.The outages date to severe weather that began on Aug 11 and initially knocked out service to about 300,000 NIPSCO customers. The utility has called it the largest and most widespread outage event in its history, the Associated Press reported.

City grid needs extensive rebuilding

In Gary alone, roughly 300 poles and 44 transmission poles require repair or replacement, said Melody Birmingham, executive vice-president and group president, utilities, at NiSource, NIPSCO’s parent company.Winds reached 159kmph at Gary/Chicago International Airport during the Aug 11 storm. The National Weather Service preliminarily confirmed the system as a derecho — a widespread, long-lived line of thunderstorms that causes significant wind damage.The agency said winds of roughly 113kmph to 161kmph swept across parts of eastern Illinois and northwest Indiana. Five tornadoes had also been confirmed in its initial assessment.Birmingham described the loss of perishable food and days without air conditioning as a “real burden” after what she called a “historic storm”. “These aren’t simple repairs,” Birmingham said at a news conference. “These are systems that are being rebuilt.”

Generator costs, insulin storage add to strain

For some residents, the long wait for power has become expensive.Jeremy Spurrier, 51, said he was fortunate to have a generator at his Portage home, about 64km southwest of Chicago, but keeping it running costs about $75 a day. His family has largely switched to non-perishable food such as soup.The blackout has also complicated how Spurrier stores his insulin. He drives to Illinois for ice to keep it cold. “If I run out of ice, that’s several hundred dollars of insulin just ruined,” he said.

Utility rejects concerns Gary is being ignored

In majority-Black Gary, some residents have complained that their community is being overlooked as the outage stretches into a second week.Birmingham, who is Black, rejected suggestions that lower-income residents were receiving less attention and blamed social-media posts for fuelling that perception. She said customers were also without power in areas that were probably affluent. “This has nothing to do with race or any type of division,” Birmingham said. “It’s really a matter of where the storm hit.”Gary Mayor Eddie Melton acknowledged the strain, describing residents as “frustrated and exhausted”, but said more than 600 linemen were working to restore electricity in the city.“I want to reiterate this is clearly not just a Gary situation. It is a northwest Indiana situation,” Melton said.That wider impact was reflected in outage figures from last week. Reuters reported that Indiana was the hardest-hit state in the Midwest, with more than 215,000 customers without electricity at one stage and NIPSCO accounting for about 199,000 of them.

At least seven deaths reported since Aug 11

At least seven people had died since the storms began on Aug 11, including a 4-year-old boy, three men and three women, according to Liz Woods, a spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.Elsewhere in Indiana, rivers reached record levels and roads and bridges were damaged or washed out. More than 350 evacuations were carried out, along with scores of rescues and welfare checks.

Power fails again at undamaged home

Myra Carden, 74, said the storm left her Whiting home untouched, “not even a chair was blown over in the yard” yet by Wednesday she was dealing with her second blackout.Carden lives with her son and three dogs. Their first outage lasted more than two days before power returned, only to fail again on Tuesday.She said she had reported the outage more than once but was repeatedly told that an earlier report had already been registered. “More than once I have put in an outage report,” she said. “All I get back is, ‘You already put in a report.’ Well, what do you want me to do? … This doesn’t make sense. Of course I’m not a lineman; I’m a paralegal.”Carden runs a generator for the refrigerator only when someone is home to monitor it. She also has a garage freezer packed with beef and chicken and said she was sure all of it would have to be thrown away.For Gary, the Aug 25 estimate means some customers could remain without electricity for nearly two weeks after the Aug 11 storm. Reuters reported last week that NIPSCO had expected to restore about 90% of affected customers by Aug 18 and complete restoration systemwide by Aug 21, four days before Gary’s current target.