GARY, Ind. (WBBM Newsradio) – About 107,000 NIPSCO customers remain without power Monday morning as crews continue working to repair widespread damage from a series of severe storms across northern Indiana.
NIPSCO said it has restored service to about 231,000 customers since the storm event began. The utility has recorded about 338,000 outages from Aug. 11 through Aug. 16 as repeated rounds of severe weather damaged its electric system.
The Aug. 11 storm alone caused about 301,000 outages, affecting more than 60% of NIPSCO’s electric customers and making it one of the largest outage events in the company’s history. About 81,500 customers affected by that initial storm were still without power Sunday night.
NIPSCO expects about 90% of affected customers to have service restored by the end of Tuesday, Aug. 18, with nearly all customers restored by the end of Friday, Aug. 21. The utility cautioned that some individual outages could last longer.
Most customers in communities including Crown Point, Cedar Lake, Michigan City, LaPorte, Lowell and St. John are expected to have power restored by Tuesday night. Restoration in several other communities, including Hobart, Merrillville, Porter and Westville, is expected by Wednesday afternoon, while Chesterton, Dyer, Schererville and Valparaiso are expected to see most service restored by Wednesday night.
The outages follow days of destructive storms that brought damaging winds, tornadoes and flooding to Indiana. At least seven deaths have been blamed on the severe weather.
President Donald Trump approved an emergency disaster declaration Saturday, making federal assistance available to supplement state and local response efforts. Indiana Gov. Mike Braun previously declared a statewide emergency after wind damage hit northwest Indiana and significant flooding affected central portions of the state.
