GARY, Ind. — Twelve days after a punishing storm tore through northwest Indiana, a large share of this Lake Michigan city of roughly 68,000 people is still hauling spoiled food to the curb, lining up for boxed lunches, and hunting for an outlet to charge a phone.
The trouble started Aug. 11, when a derecho with gusts near 100 mph swept across Lake, Porter, and nearby counties, snapping power lines and dropping mature trees onto homes and school buildings. NIPSCO, the utility serving the region, has called it the largest outage event in company history, with roughly 374,500 total outages logged across the storm and its aftershocks — a figure that reflects repeat hits to the system as much as it does unique households. State officials have tied seven weather-related deaths across Indiana to the storm and subsequent flooding, including a four-year-old boy, three men, and three women, according to Indiana's State Emergency Operations Center.
By Sunday morning, NIPSCO's outage tracker showed the region-wide count down to roughly 28,500 customers, with just under 346,000 already reconnected. Gary still carries the heaviest load, at about 15,500 customers without service, followed by Portage at roughly 4,200 and Hobart at fewer than 900. Those numbers shift by the hour as crews finish repairs. What hasn't moved is the finish line NIPSCO set for the two hardest-hit cities: full restoration in Gary and Portage by 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, two full weeks after the lights first went out. Out-of-state help is now part of the push — ComEd, which serves northern Illinois, has sent more than 60 additional workers across the state line to speed repairs.
A gunfire scare pauses repair crews
The recovery hit an unexpected snag on Aug. 14, when gunfire struck a NIPSCO utility vehicle carrying two crew members surveying storm damage near Rutledge Street just after midnight. No one was hurt, but NIPSCO paused restoration work in Gary while it coordinated with police. Work resumed the following afternoon once Gary police, Indiana State Police, and the Indiana National Guard began escorting crews. Mayor Eddie Melton condemned the shooting as intolerable and said it wouldn't be allowed to interrupt the restoration effort.
The scale of the damage has pulled in state and federal money. President Trump approved an emergency declaration for 53 Indiana counties on Aug. 15, unlocking limited FEMA support capped at $5 million. Indiana has since asked for a full major disaster declaration, telling federal officials statewide losses could top $5 billion — a request that lands at an awkward moment, since the Trump administration has signaled it wants states to shoulder more disaster costs going forward. In the meantime, Gov. Mike Braun has opened a state relief fund offering up to $5,000 per displaced household for essentials like clothing and medical equipment, funded partly through the state's fireworks tax revenue.
Life on generators and hand-me-down meals
For thousands of households, the outage has turned ordinary chores into a daily grind. Refrigerators warmed within days, pushing people to throw out groceries and search for scarce ice. Stations without backup generators couldn't pump gas at all, leaving some drivers waiting for over an hour only to find the pumps dry.
Gary's city-run City Life Center has handed out three free meals a day since the storm hit, a lifeline for residents like Dajon Holman, who described going without electricity as making it hard just to eat, in comments carried by ABC7 Chicago. Local churches, the Gary branch of the NAACP, the Gary Muslim Center, and independent volunteer groups have opened their own food and supply sites to keep pace with demand no single organization can meet alone. Gary resident Shatiya Hardin, still waiting for power to return, told CBS News it isn't acceptable for the community to stay stuck in survival mode.
Older residents and those managing medical conditions have been squeezed hardest. Parker Bryant, 75, whose husband needs a refrigerated diabetes medication and who herself relies on a CPAP machine, told the Chicago Sun-Times that keeping a generator running around the clock isn't cheap for a retired couple, adding that money is tight.
Local businesses have absorbed their own version of the outage. One Gary gas station stayed closed for four days until its owner could rent a generator, and even then it could only power a floodlight, a register, and a single cooler. Restaurants, grocery stores, and banks around the city have faced the same limits — some running on borrowed power, others shut entirely. Roughly one in three Gary residents lives in poverty, according to Census data cited by CBS News, leaving little cushion for families now paying for ice, fuel, and takeout they'd otherwise skip.
Classrooms that still haven't reopened
The outage has also delayed the school year across the region. Gary Community School Corporation, which enrolls several thousand students, opened for the year in early August but shut down days after the storm and, as of this weekend, still had not announced a firm date to reopen — the district says it's still assessing every building for safety before letting students back in. Neighboring Portage Township Schools, originally due to start Aug. 12, is still targeting Aug. 25 to open, the same day NIPSCO expects to finish restoring the area's power.
Gary Mayor Eddie Melton has pressed NIPSCO to speed up repairs and bring in additional outside crews, submitting a formal request Friday for more vegetation workers and linemen and arguing that the city's mostly Black population is bearing an outsized share of the hardship. Melton has acknowledged residents are frustrated and exhausted, while stressing the crisis reaches well beyond Gary alone. Indiana Gov. Mike Braun echoed the pressure Thursday, saying flatly it's unacceptable that so many Hoosiers remain without power, according to WGN-TV.
NIPSCO parent company executive Melody Birmingham has pushed back on suggestions that race or income shaped the restoration order, telling reporters at a briefing that the slower Gary timeline traces to the scope of the damage there — 335 damaged poles and dozens of transmission structures needing repair or replacement — rather than to where the storm hit hardest demographically.
A lawsuit accuses NIPSCO of neglect
The prolonged outage has drawn legal action. An amended class-action complaint, filed Aug. 17 in Porter Superior Court, names Porter County resident Jack Tipold as lead plaintiff alongside 15 co-plaintiffs and accuses NIPSCO of failing to keep trees and vegetation properly trimmed away from its power lines going back to August 2024 — a pattern the suit claims turned an otherwise survivable storm into a prolonged, region-wide blackout. Attorneys from the Allen Law Group discussed the filing at a press conference in Chesterton, arguing the company reacts to storm damage instead of trimming preventively. "This needs to change," attorney Otto Shragal said. NIPSCO has said it strongly disagrees with that characterization and will contest the suit, noting its vegetation-management spending has more than doubled since 2016.
Deep Latino roots next door
The crisis is unfolding beside one of the Midwest's oldest Mexican-American communities. East Chicago's Indiana Harbor neighborhood — remembered in early historical accounts as "La Colonia" — began drawing Mexican laborers to steel mills and rail yards as far back as the 1910s, during a wave of immigration tied to labor shortages and the Mexican Revolution. Nicole Martinez-LeGrand, a curator at the Indiana Historical Society, has described the neighborhood as the epicenter of Latino history in the state. East Chicago itself finished its NIPSCO restoration days ahead of Gary, and this history is offered here as regional context rather than as evidence that Latino residents have borne the brunt of this particular storm — the hardest-hit and longest-suffering community in the current crisis is Gary, which is majority Black.
For now, aid groups say the most urgent task is simply keeping people fed and safe until crews finish the job. Forecasters expect a break in the weather, with cooler, less humid air moving in that should make both the wait and the repair work easier. NIPSCO says it remains on track to restore Gary and Portage by Tuesday night, but after previous restoration dates slipped more than once, many residents say they'll believe it only when the lights actually come back on.
