Thousands remain without power 12 days after Indiana storms as Gary bears prolonged recovery
BY SCN WEBDESK
GARY, Indiana — Thousands of people in northwest Indiana remained without electricity on Sunday, 12 days after violent storms tore through the region, as an extraordinary restoration effort struggled with widespread destruction to the power grid and residents in some of the hardest-hit communities questioned why recovery was taking so long.
The storms that began on August 11 brought winds reaching 99 mph, flooding and extensive tree damage, knocking out electricity to roughly 301,000 customers in Northern Indiana Public Service Company's territory — more than 60% of the utility's customer base. Twelve days later, Indiana's Department of Homeland Security said 30,340 outages remained statewide as of 6 a.m. Sunday, with most concentrated in Lake and Porter counties.
The prolonged blackout has hit Gary particularly hard. More than half the city's residents initially lost electricity, according to CBS News, and families have spent days searching for hot meals, charging phones and replacing food spoiled in refrigerators and freezers. Gary also faces an underlying economic vulnerability: roughly one-third of its population lives in poverty, making generators, hotel stays and repeated replacement of food significantly harder for many households to afford.
NIPSCO says the duration of the restoration reflects the exceptional physical damage rather than neglect of particular communities. The utility has said crews must replace about 300 distribution poles and 44 transmission poles, while fallen trees and damaged lines have complicated access. More than 600 linemen were deployed earlier in the recovery, and crews from Illinois utility ComEd were sent across the state line this weekend to accelerate repairs.
The scale of progress is substantial but has done little to ease frustration among those still waiting. NIPSCO said it had restored service to more than 300,000 customers during the recovery period, yet some households that lost electricity on August 11 remain disconnected. The utility's restoration estimates indicated that some customers in Gary might wait until August 25 — a full two weeks after the initial storm — before service is completely restored.
For residents, the consequences extend far beyond dark homes. Families have thrown away spoiled groceries, spent heavily on generator fuel and struggled to keep phones and medical equipment charged. One Portage resident told the Associated Press that running a generator was costing his family about $75 a day, illustrating how a prolonged infrastructure failure can quickly become a financial emergency even for households equipped with backup power.
Schools have also been disrupted. Gary's school district, which serves roughly 4,300 students, remained closed during part of the outage, while other districts delayed classes as officials assessed whether buildings, transportation routes and electrical systems were safe. Community organizations, churches and local authorities have responded with hot meals, cooling locations, charging stations and other emergency assistance.
The storms themselves were deadly. Indiana officials say seven disaster-related deaths had been confirmed as of August 21 across Delaware, Jennings, Lake, LaPorte, Henry and Porter counties. The state has established disaster assistance while Governor Mike Braun has sought additional federal help for communities facing flooding, damaged homes and infrastructure losses.
The length of the outage has also produced a legal challenge. Residents have filed a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing NIPSCO of failing to adequately maintain trees and vegetation around electrical infrastructure before the storm. NIPSCO disputes allegations that inadequate preparation caused the extended outages and says it has substantially increased vegetation-management spending since 2016. The lawsuit remains an allegation and has not established liability for the blackout.
That distinction is important because the physical severity of the storm is well documented. Winds approaching 100 mph can topple mature trees, poles and transmission equipment across large areas simultaneously, creating a fundamentally different restoration problem from an ordinary localized outage. Crews must often clear debris and rebuild sections of the distribution network before individual homes can safely be reconnected.
But after nearly two weeks, the disaster is also raising a broader question about resilience.
Electricity networks are increasingly being tested by severe weather events capable of damaging thousands of individual components at once. Restoring a system after that level of destruction depends not merely on generating enough electricity but on having sufficient replacement transformers, poles, transmission equipment, vegetation clearance crews and skilled workers available to rebuild the network connecting electricity to individual neighborhoods.
Gary illustrates what happens when that recovery collides with economic vulnerability. Losing electricity for several hours is an inconvenience; losing it for nearly two weeks can mean lost wages, closed businesses, spoiled food, generator expenses and difficulty maintaining basic communications. Those costs fall disproportionately on households with the least financial capacity to absorb them.
The numbers show both sides of Indiana's recovery. Hundreds of thousands of connections have been restored since August 11, demonstrating the scale of the repair operation. Yet more than 30,000 outages remained Sunday morning, according to the state's own emergency-management figures.
For those households, the storm did not end when the wind stopped.
Nearly two weeks later, they are still living with it.
SCN MOST VERIFIED & UNIQUE FACT
The strongest number is not Sunday's outage count alone.
The August 11 storm initially caused roughly 301,000 outages across NIPSCO territory — affecting more than 60% of the utility's customers. Repair crews have had to replace around 300 distribution poles and 44 transmission poles, helping explain why full restoration in some areas has been measured in weeks rather than hours.
And as of 6 a.m. August 23, Indiana's government still recorded 30,340 outages statewide, overwhelmingly concentrated in Lake and Porter counties.