NIPSCO officials say it could take several days to restore power to areas affected by Monday night’s storms. As of 4:30 this morning, nearly 35,000 customers are still in the dark. That number includes more than 700 in Starke County, more than 600 in Marshall County and a handful in Pulaski County. Nearly 2,000 NIPSCO customers in LaPorte are without power as well.
LaPorte, Lake and Porter Counties are experiencing the highest number of outages, according to NIPSCO officials. More specific estimates as to when power will be restored will be available later today. The extensive damage included more than 130 broken distribution poles, tree damage and 580 reports of downed electric wire. Additional field workers from Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Missouri are working with NIPSCO’s full-time field employees. Citizens are asked to stay away from downed power lines and power restoration crews working in the area due to safety concerns.
NIPSCO officials say their restoration process starts with repairing large transmission and distribution lines that supply electricity to large numbers of customers in large geographic areas. This includes critical customers like hospitals and emergency response. They say repairs to other lines that serve smaller groups of customers can’t be made until larger lines feeding electricity to those areas are fixed. Here’s a link to the NIPSCO outage map. http://www.nipscooutages.com/WSSNisourceOutageMap/outagemap.html?action=city&reloaded=true
More than 500 Kankakee Valley REMC customers are also without power. That number was current as of 4:30 a.m. Most of those outages are in Starke County south of State Road 10 east and west of North Judson. Numerous outages are also reported in Pulaski and LaPorte Counties, along with a handful in Porter County. View their outage information here. http://outages.kvremc.com:81/
