Families in Hammond, Indiana, deal with storm damage and flooding amid power outages
Much of Northwest Indiana remains without power as residents there started cleaning up debris from severe storms.
The governor expects to declare a state of emergency for the entire state, as some families are dealing with damage from the straight-line winds and flooding. Neighbors say the water is only rising.
When Arkansas Street became a lake of its own Tuesday morning, Maribel Page's family decided to embrace it.
"My kids are making the best of it, but, you know, there's a lot of cars that come down here. I don't think they realize how deep it is," she said.
It's deep enough to damage a car's engine and the water seeped into their basement, flooding it.
"It's damaged ... everything down there is damaged," she said. "Overnight, the water just rised up and it's still continuing to rise."
Over 24 hours later, the water crept up to the sidewalks and there's no hope it will recede soon because their neighborhood and most of Hammond are out of power. City workers say that means even the pumping station.
"They said it will not drain until the power is back on, meaning the power in the City of Hammond," Page said.
Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott says he talked with representatives from NIPSCO, who said it could take through the weekend to restore power. He says families should prepare for the worst.
NIPSCO called Tuesday's storm the most destructive to impact their service in history, as straight-line winds over 90 miles per hour left devastation across Hammond and Gary.
For Hammond Public Works crews, they've been hard at work cleaning up massive trees on top of homes and blocking streets throughout the day.
"We've been busy all day. We started about 6 o'clock and we going still, we will be here until 6:30-7 o'clock tonight," Jeff said. "This is the worst we had by far. The other cleanup took a couple of days or something ... this is going to be ongoing."
It's unclear how long they will be out of power and be back to normalcy. The Page's say they are surprisingly grateful for this time.
"It's been good bonding with the children," Page said. "They're not on their phone, there's nothing to watch on TV, so you got to get to know your children when you are in times like this."
Hammond schools, which were supposed to have their first day on Wednesday, announced they will start on Tuesday next week.
Mayor McDermott on Wednesday afternoon said 22,000 people were without power. That number remained the same into the evening.
