NIPSCO officials say most customers in their service area should have electricity by 10 p.m. tonight, and service to the rest should be back on sometime tomorrow. Monday night’s storms left 128,000 total customers across northwest Indiana in the dark. NIPSCO crews and workers from other utility companies in Indiana and surrounding states have been working around the clock since to restore power. As of 11:30 a.m. CDT, 32,000 customers are still without power.
NIPSCO officials stress that safety of the public and their linemen is the top priority when it comes to repairing storm damage. They start by fixing large transmission and distribution lines that supply electricity to large numbers of customers in large geographic areas – including critical customers such as hospitals and emergency response. Repairs to other lines that serve smaller groups of customers can’t be made until the larger lines feeding electricity to those areas are repaired. NIPSCO officials compare damage from Monday’s storm to that caused by a June 24, 2013 storm, which led to one of the largest restoration efforts in the company’s history. Damage reports from this week’s storm include more than 130 broken distribution poles, tree damage and 580 reports of downed electric wire.
Click NIPSCO Estimated Restoration Status for an estimate of when power may be restored.
