Utility says it’s working around the clock, but city officials say they feel ignored.

(FREE PRESS INDIANA NEWS) — Julene Anderson, a 61-year-old mother in Gary, still didn’t have power on Friday. It’s been 11 days since straight-line winds and two tornadoes led to the largest power outage in the history of NIPSCO, the northwest Indiana utility provider.

The widespread outage has left large swaths of the city without working traffic signals, air conditioning or fans, reliable ways to store and cook food and limited ability to manage medications and medical devices.

For the last two weeks, Anderson’s main priority has been finding enough ice to keep food and water cool and enough gas to drive to get ice.

Both are still difficult to find anywhere in the city, Anderson said.

“I literally waited an hour and 45 minutes in line at the station only to get up to my turn at the pump and they ran out,” she said. “I had to pray, ‘God, please get me home on these fumes,’ because I live quite a bit away.”

By Friday afternoon, more than 331,100 NIPSCO customers’ power had been restored, but over 41,500 customers remained in the dark, according to the utility.

The largest majority of those customers are in Gary, where full power isn’t expected to be restored until Tuesday. Gary, along with Portage, are scheduled to be the last cities to receive power.

Darren Washington, vice president of the Gary Common Council, said residents are frustrated, especially because their electric bills have been increasing for years. The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission has approved rate increases for NIPSCO twice in five years.

“It is absolutely unacceptable for NIPSCO to have a two-week delay for northwest Indiana Hoosiers,” Washington said Friday afternoon. “It is NIPSCO’s fault, being a billion-dollar company, that it took this long to restore power.”

Why it’s taking so long to restore power

City officials say the main reason it’s taken so long to restore power is due to NIPSCO’s failure to properly trim trees and other vegetation that grows above and around power lines.

The 100 mph winds that tore through the region knocked many of those trees and branches onto power lines and poles.

NIPSCO conducted damage assessments on more than 2,000 miles of power lines in the area, Melody Birmingham, the group utilities president at NiSource, NIPSCO’s parent company, said during a Wednesday press conference.

“These aren’t simple repairs,” she said. “These are lines that ordinarily take us … weeks or months that we are trying to accomplish in days or weeks.”

But Washington said much of that damage could have been avoided if NIPSCO had invested in tree maintenance in the city. Instead, he said, the city has been ignored because it’s economically disadvantaged.

“I believe NIPSCO didn’t really care about Gary … because, oh well, they don’t have corporations and they don’t have a lot of business,” Washington said.

NIPSCO said employees have been “working around the clock since before the first storm touched down” and has mobilized emergency support from across the country to help.

“We know our customers have been through a great deal … and we are deeply grateful for their patience as recovery continues,” the company said in an email.

NIPSCO said it has worked closely with local officials, emergency management agencies, state leaders and the Indiana National Guard. Across the region, crews are working to repair and rebuild infrastructure damaged by this historic storm.

“We remain focused on restoring service as safely and as quickly as possible,” the utility said.

Survival mode

Linda Barnes-Caldwell, Gary’s council president, said her power came back on Monday, but her neighbors across the street still don’t have electricity.

“They were standing in the door looking at me the other day, like, ‘How dare you?’” she said with a laugh.

Barnes-Caldwell said neighbors and others in the community have delivered ice and dry ice to elderly residents to keep medications refrigerated. An oxygen-tank filling station has been set up near her neighborhood, with some people visiting three times a day for a refill.

But she worries for residents who have spent their money on hotel stays and diesel for their electric generators who now face rental payments due at the end of the month.

“They’re just trying to maintain a level of survival,” Barnes-Caldwell said. “It’s hard. We need help.”

FPI News, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations. Sign up for our free newsletter. FPI News reporter Carson Gerber covers healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, immigration … and just about any other topic that’s shaping how we live in Indiana today. Reach him at 765-204-4250 or carson.gerber@fpinews.org.