Nearly 175,000 in Northwest Indiana still without power in wake of severe storms
Nearly 175,000 homes and businesses in Northwest Indiana remained without power on Friday afternoon, days after severe storms caused widespread damage across the region.
Tuesday's storm packed wind gusts of 99 miles per hour. That's as strong as an EF1 tornado.
In the Miller Beach community in Gary, businesses were still in the dark on Friday. Traffic lights have become four way stops. Downed trees and branches lined Hemlock Avenue.
The cleanup has been nonstop since Tuesday, but more than 34,000 NIPSCO customers in Gary were still without power.
Miller Beach resident Angelo Comer described Tuesday's storm as "23 minutes of hell."
"The sirens went off. Things went to flying. You could hear it hitting the houses," she said.
Downed power lines were visible throughout the community on Friday.
"I'm lucky. I have a generator. It works on part of my house," Corya Channing said. "I've got some coolers with ice right now. I was able to get some fresh food yesterday, by driving to Michigan City."
Comer had to fill two garbage bags with food from her freezer and place them in the dumpster in front of her home after losing power.
"Even the community food bank is out of power right now," she said.
NIPSCO said power should be restored to 90% of those impacted by the storms by Tuesday and 100% of customers should have power restored by next Friday.
"I'm frustrated of course. I mean, these outages, this is not the first time this has happened. This is like the second or third time this summer that we've had an outage, but this is much, much, much more serious," Channing said.
Comer said with the outages have come what she calls extraordinary rate increases.
"I opened up the bill and almost fainted. In February, it was $785.00. NIPSCO carries everything, not just your lights, but your gas also," she said.
Gary City Councilman At-Large Darren Washington said that's why the Gary Common Council unanimously passed a resolution putting NIPSCO on notice about what they see as excessive rates, because he said NIPSCO should have competition.
"Friday, next Tuesday, next Friday for what we are paying as rate payers? It is totally unacceptable and the legislators, they need to bring competition to this area," he said.
In response to the outage, NIPSCO said additional storms on Wednesday and Thursday created new outages, causing additional damage and slowing the restoration work that was already underway.
Meantime organizers for the Gary Air Show canceled the event scheduled for next weekend due to the recent storm damage. They said they want all resources to be available for response and recovery efforts.
