New power outages in parts of Northwest Indiana affecting thousands

Thousands of people in Northwest Indiana who recently got power back after last week's severe storms have lost service again.

The outage is affecting parts of Munster, Dyer, Schereville, St. John and Highland. In total, about 9,000 NIPSCO customers were affected.

NIPSCO said, around 1:45 p.m., it was notified of a pole fire in Schererville.    

Schererville Fire Chief Robert Patterson said, based on information from utility contractors, it appears sleeves on some power lines failed, causing them to fall.

People have been asked to avoid the area and use caution around any power lines.

Dyer Town Manager David Hein said approximately 75% of the town lost power again. While not everyone in Dyer had had their power restored, many whose service was turned back on in the last day just lost power again.

"I know a lot of people had just thought they were putting their generators away and are very frustrated that they have to fire them back up one more time. So we're hopeful that if they can get this cleared up and get moving. Prior to this outage, I want to say there was 1,200 residents without power," Hein said.

Hein said the outage affected a couple schools in Dyer.

"This was their second first day of school, because the first first day of school was interrupted by the original storms. So, they attempted to get back to school today, and now we have a little power outage going on. So, these kids will definitely have a story to tell in the future," he said.

Dyer was supposed to have power fully restored by midnight Thursday night. It's unclear how the new outage will impact that timeline.