Power outages persist in northwestern Indiana nearly two weeks after August 11 derecho

Nearly two weeks after an August 11 storm with wind gusts up to 100 mph swept across northern Illinois and northwestern Indiana, thousands of residents are still without power. On August 23, about 9,000 customers in Gary, Indiana, remained in the dark, according to city officials.

Gary Mayor Eddie Melton said on the city’s Facebook page that the 12-day outage is “too long for families to be without power” and expressed shared frustration with affected residents. Indiana Governor Mike Braun echoed the concern in a post on X, noting that the state had declared an emergency on August 13 and deployed the National Guard and other agencies to assist utility crews.

The Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) reported that 16,476 customer accounts were still without electricity as of 4 p.m. CT on August 23, down from a peak of 374,500 outages after the storm. The utility said it had added contractor crews and received assistance from neighboring utilities and mutual-aid partners nationwide. It projected that power would be broadly restored to Munster by midnight on August 24 and to Gary and Portage by midnight on August 25, though individual restoration times could vary.

Residents described the prolonged outage as a hardship. One homeowner, Denise Bairns, said she had been told power might not return to her home until September 12. Another resident, Desmond Poppy, said the community felt “under siege.”

The National Weather Service has preliminarily classified the event as a derecho, a fast-moving line of thunderstorms that can produce sustained winds of at least 58 mph over a path of 250 miles. The storm also spawned multiple tornadoes, including two that crossed into Lake County from Illinois.