NIPSCO says power restored to 99% of customers in Northwest Indiana more than 2 weeks after devastating storms
NIPSCO said power has been restored to 99% of customers impacted by this month's devastating storms.
At the height of the outages after storms that started on Tuesday, Aug. 11, hundreds of thousands of customers across Northwest Indiana were in the dark. Some families in Gary went nearly two weeks without power.
NIPSCO estimated restoration would be completed by 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday of this week, but has stressed that not every home and business would necessarily have power by then.
Gary Mayor Eddie Melton said Tuesday morning that he would not consider the job finished until every customer's power was back on.
As NIPSCO closes in on full restoration, state and local leaders are turning their attention to the cleanup and what went wrong.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun has called for a full investigation into NIPSCO's handling of the outages. Ben Inskeep, program director for the utility watchdog Citizens Action Coalition, said that the process could take anywhere from six months to a year, and a variety of stakeholders will be able to weigh in on that process.
On Wednesday morning, Indiana state Rep. Earl Harris Jr. (D-East Chicago) said power was back on for almost 100% of Gary.
"But people are bothered that it took so long — the impact it's had on their life, having to throw out food. What about those that have medicine that has to be refrigerated, living in the dark? People have had to go and stay at other places," said Harris. "So a lot of frustration at how long it's taken."
Harris said his constituents do not believe NIPSCO's statements that they understand customers' frustration are enough.
"People are bothered, and they want answers as to why this happened, what wasn't in place? We've heard stories of vegetation that was overgrown that NIPSCO did not take care of. We also have an aged grid that was not upped. They requested, I believe they received some $2 billion from customers to do upgrades, and I think that's going to be part of the investigation is why weren't we ready?" said Harris. "And with more weather coming today and the beginning of next week, I'm sure there's a lot of nervousness."
Harris heads the Indiana House Black Legislative Caucus, which had already decided utilities would be the focus for 2027, with townhalls all over the state.
"This is changing the conversation, because now we have to think about what happened and think about legislative ideas to think about what happened and prevent and stop this type, this kind of failure from happening again," he said.
Earlier this month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, announced that federal disaster assistance is now available for the state of Indiana following severe storms.
Individual assistance is now available through the Indiana Department of Homeland Security as part of the State Disaster Relief Fund. Folks impacted by this month's storms may qualify for emergency grants of up to $5,000.
"That will help with things like loss of food and other things they had to do. For some families it might be enough, but for some families it may not," he said. "You also have the lack of power, which means no refrigerator, which also impacted medicine. And for a lot of people, having that medicine replaced is probably not going to happen."
Gov. Braun on Wednesday also announced a new texting took to make it easier for those impacted by the storms to find recovery resources.
Through the Indiana 211 service, residents may text IN211HELP to 898-211 to get started. The service, which runs 24/7, will prompt users to select what kind of assistance they need and will provide a list of resources based on a user's ZIP code.
