Overview
- Tuesday's severe storm produced gusts up to 99 mph and tornadoes that snapped poles and downed trees, causing more than 300,000 NIPSCO customers to lose power at the peak of the outages.
- Utilities and mutual-aid crews began large-scale restoration, but nearly 175,000 customers in Northwest Indiana and roughly 33,000 in Gary remained without power several days later.
- A NIPSCO crew vehicle was struck by gunfire on Friday night in Gary, causing a temporary halt to in-city restoration while officials confirmed there were no injuries and investigated the incident.
- City and state police deployed additional troopers and coordinated with NIPSCO, and crews resumed work Saturday evening after law enforcement provided enhanced security for restoration teams.
- Officials warned communities face ongoing hardship from spoiled food, business outages and canceled events, NIPSCO issued a timetable to restore 90% of customers by Tuesday and full restoration by next Friday, and state and federal disaster aid has been approved as recovery continues.