Tens of thousands of people in northwest Indiana remained without power Wednesday, more than a week after deadly storms leveled trees and knocked down power lines across the region.
Northern Indiana Public Service Co. said crews were working nonstop to fix the outages, but 75,000 customers still lacked electricity by late afternoon, mostly in Lake County next to the Illinois border.
They included more than 20,000 customers in Gary, where residents lined
up again at community centers for hot meals and a place to charge phones.
The latest news for Gary wasn't good: Full restoration is not expected there until Aug. 25, NIPSCO said.
Roughly 300 poles and 44 power transmission poles need to be repaired or replaced in Gary as a result of the storm, which carried winds of 99 mph (159 kilometers per hour), said Melody Birmingham, an executive at NIPSCO's parent company.
Birmingham acknowledged the “real burden” of losing perishable food and people living for days without air conditioning after a “historic storm” that initially left 300,000 customers in the dark.
“These aren't simple repairs,” Birmingham said at a news conference. “These are systems that are being rebuilt.”
Jeremy Spurrier, 51, said he's fortunate to have a generator at his Portage home, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. But the generator is expensive — it goes through about $75 of gas a day — and Spurrier said his family is relying on nonperishable food like soup. He drives to Illinois to get ice to chill his insulin.
"If I run out of ice, that’s several hundred dollars of insulin just ruined,” he said.
Gary, a majority-Black city, has been especially hit hard, with some residents voicing frustration that they're being ignored. Birmingham denied that low-income residents were being overlooked and blamed posts on social media.
“We have areas that are probably affluent where we still have customers out as well. ... This has nothing to do with race or any type of division,” said Birmingham, who is Black. “It's really a matter of where the storm hit.”
Gary Mayor Eddie Melton acknowledged that locals were “frustrated and exhausted” but said more than 600 linemen were working to restore power in the city.
"I want to reiterate this is clearly not just a Gary situation. It is a northwest Indiana situation,” Melton said.
A 4-year-old boy, three men and three women were among those who had died since the storms began Aug. 11, said Liz Woods, a spokesperson for the state Department of Homeland Security.
In Whiting, Myra Carden, 74, said her home wasn’t damaged by the storm — “not even a chair was blown over in the yard.” But she was in her second blackout Wednesday.
Carden, her son and three dogs lost power for more than two days last week. Then the electricity went out again Tuesday.
“More than once I have put in an outage report,” she said. ”All I get back is, ‘You already put in a report.’ Well, what do you want me to do? ... This doesn’t make sense. Of course I’m not a lineman; I’m a paralegal.”
Carden uses a generator to keep the refrigerator humming but only when someone’s home to monitor it.
“We have a deep freeze in the garage packed full with beef and chicken. I’m sure everything will be thrown away,” she said.
