Two weeks ago, on Aug. 11, severe storms hit Indiana, killing at least seven people and displacing more than 1,000. Heavy rainfall flooded communities, brought down trees, and, most notably, left hundreds of thousands without power.
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In one city — Gary, Indiana — more than half the residents lost power.
Hundreds of thousands lose power
When storms first swept through the area, power was knocked out for more than 300,000 Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) customers, making it the largest outage in the company’s history.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun declared a state of emergency in response to the storm, mobilizing the Indiana National Guard and state crews to help clear roads for NIPSCO crews.
NIPSCO said it would have power restored within a week of the storms, by Aug. 18. As that date passed, tens of thousands were still without power.
In the days following, NIPSCO released restoration estimates for Northwest Indiana communities, but CBS News reports Gary was initially left off the list.
“We are being left behind every time something goes on. Gary is left behind,” resident Bridget Sanders told CBS. “We are the last ones on the totem pole to get anything done.”
Eventually, Gary was added to the list, with NIPSCO saying power would be restored by Tuesday, Aug. 25 — two weeks after the storms.
Now, as of Monday, more than 10,000 remain without power ahead of the Tuesday deadline.
However, of those 10,000, NIPSCO says 4,300 are from the Aug. 11 storms, while the rest are unrelated.
Lawsuit filed against NIPSCO
Despite outage numbers dropping and improvements across the state since the storms, a civil lawsuit was filed against NIPSCO last week.
The lawsuit alleges the company failed to proactively trim back vegetation from power lines, saying downed trees and vegetation were the primary cause of outages during the storms earlier this month.
NIPSCO issued a statement after the lawsuit was filed, arguing against the claims, saying “vegetation management spend has more than doubled since 2016.”
“We strongly disagree with the characterization of NIPSCO’s vegetation management practices,” NIPSCO said.
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