Thousands of residents of north-west Indiana on Saturday were headed for their 11th day without electric power after storms swept through the state, toppling trees and power lines, earlier in August. The powerless conditions have led to food lines, closed businesses, dead phones, no schools, spoiled food, dirty clothes, dry gas pumps and a multitude of other deleterious effects on life without energy. The Northern Indiana Public Service Company (Nipsco), the region’s major utility company, said 33,124 customers were still without power on Saturday.
And residents in the community of Gary have been told they may not see any restoration until Tuesday – two weeks after the 11 August start of a days-long period of potent storms and flooding that killed several people. Nipsco posted that it had been able to restore power to 341,376 customers since the storms out of a total of 374,500 that had lost service. The utility said in statement: “Substantial progress has been made in restoring service to our communities.” But it said customers “may continue to encounter circumstances that temporarily increase numbers of outages”.
That statement is “ridiculous”, Gary resident Bridget Sanders told the CBS News affiliate in nearby Chicago. They need to do better.” Sanders also said “we are being left behind” as well as being relegated to be “the last ones on the totem pole”. Residents, meanwhile, filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Nipsco that accuses it of failing to trim trees that brought down the power lines.
It was obvious and it was preventable,” attorney Otto Shragal of the Allen Law Group said. Nipsco denied the allegations, arguing that it maintains a vegetation management program. The company said it “understands the impact that prolonged outages can have on our customers and communities, particularly following storms, and in particular, the severe weather events that caused unprecedented damage across Nipsco’s electric system.” It also said it was suspending any kind of disconnection for customers who were having trouble paying their utility bills.
About 300 power poles were damaged in the storms. Residents in the Aetna neighborhood of Gary, one of the hardest hit, say that – beside electric power storm debris – downed tress still line the streets. We’re trying to maintain, but it’s not easy.
We have every window in our house open, you know, trying to maintain safety as well. We spent the night in the car, the truck, a couple of nights just for air. It’s really, really hard.” Renita Theus, 41, told the New York Times: “Every day I’m crying.
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