Eight days after a historic storm knocked out power to most of Gary, a NIPSCO official announced that the utility is targeting 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, to fully restore power to the city.
For some Gary residents, that could mean nearly two weeks without electricity.
Melody Birmingham, executive vice president and utilities group president for NIPSCO parent company NiSource Inc., delivered the news Wednesday as she stood beside Mayor Eddie Melton. It was an update residents had been seeking after Gary was left off a circulating list of restoration timeframes.
“There is a process to restoration,” Birmingham said. “Understanding it isn’t always as fast as we would like, but we’re making the restorations as safely as we can so that we can ensure we get customers back on.”
As of Thursday morning, nearly 25,000 Gary customers remained without power, accounting for nearly 40% of the roughly 63,000 NIPSCO customers still without electricity across Northwest Indiana. At the height of the Aug. 11 storm, about 38,000 Gary customers were without power.
NIPSCO has called the event one of the largest outage events in company history. It reported approximately 301,000 outages, affecting more than 60% of its roughly 500,000 electric customers. Subsequent storms pushed the territory-wide outage total above 370,000.
With thousands of Gary residents facing the possibility of another week without electricity, Birmingham was repeatedly asked Wednesday why restoration in the city has taken so long. She pointed to three factors: extensive tree damage, difficulty accessing damaged lines, and the severity of the storm, which saw winds approaching 100 mph.
“There’s just significant uproot of trees, down limbs that have come through that have taken out some of our power lines,” Birmingham said, adding that crews have had to coordinate access through alleyways to reach damaged lines.
Birmingham also addressed why Gary did not receive an estimated restoration time as early as some other communities.
“We tend to not provide an estimated time of restoration until we have a high level of confidence that we’ll be able to meet it, and so Gary and a few other areas … we didn’t have that confidence that we were able to share what that ETR [estimated time of restoration] would be at the time.”
Gary’s omission from an earlier NIPSCO update listing estimated restoration times helped prompt Wednesday’s news conference, Melton said.
“We’re here today because a recent Facebook post to notify the public of estimated restoration times that was posted by NIPSCO did not include the City of Gary in that description,” Melton said. “Gary was not included in that update, and we understand that that caused a lot of frustration and a lot of questions among residents on why that was not included in that.”
Melton largely deferred to Birmingham on the technical restoration questions.
Asked directly why NIPSCO’s restoration has taken longer than ComEd’s in the Chicago south suburbs after the same storm system, Birmingham — who said she previously worked for ComEd — attributed the gap to differences in tree density, grid infrastructure, and network design between the two utilities’ territories, not resource allocation. She also said NIPSCO has brought in more than 1,500 additional contractor and mutual-assistance resources.
On whether deferred maintenance tied to an earlier labor dispute contributed to the damage, Birmingham said no: “We did not defer. We did not decrease. We continued to perform the work” throughout contract negotiations with the union.
Restoration timeline
Birmingham said NIPSCO is 95% confident it will meet the Aug. 25 restoration target for Gary. Still, the deadline is later than the restoration timelines NIPSCO previously announced for several other Northwest Indiana communities.
NIPSCO is targeting full restoration in Gary by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, an estimate Birmingham said carries a 95% confidence level. The deadline comes roughly two weeks after the Aug. 11 storm and is later than the restoration timelines NIPSCO previously announced for several other Northwest Indiana communities.
Birmingham also addressed concerns rising on social media that the slow restoration in Gary has been motivated by race.
“I will tell you that this is not a socio-economic divide,” she said. “This is truly, truly a situation of where the storm hit. We have areas that are probably affluent where we still have customers out as well.
“We have employees who live here. We have family members. I have family members who live here, friends who live here, and so we would not, we have not, and should not ever prioritize how we respond based on color, based on socioeconomic status. That is not the business we’re in.”
As some residents regain power, others are still waiting their turn.
“We’re hanging in there, but to hear it may take another week is more than frustrating,” said Donald Young, a resident of Gary’s 2nd District.
Latanya Rodgers, who lives on the city’s east side, said she had her power restored Aug 17 after nearly a week without electricity.
“It’s the worst I ever saw in my life,” Rodgers said. “I tried to have patience with it, but listening to those generators, not having WiFi, was driving me crazy.”
Even with her electricity back, Rodgers was still waiting for a return to normal.
“I still don’t have WiFi,” she said.
Capital B is covering this storm for the people living through it, from the information residents need now to what happens next. Our journalists live in Gary and bring perspectives to this story you won’t find anywhere else.
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