Thousands in northwest Indiana still without power ahead of second round of severe storms on Wednesday
NIPSCO crews have been racing against the clock to restore power to thousands of northwest Indiana homes and businesses before another round of severe storms hits the area on Wednesday.
Parts of northwest Indiana were hit hard by Sunday's severe weather, which brought at least one EF-0 tornado to Newton County.
Valparaiso was among the towns hardest hit by power outages.
NIPSCO said more than 7,700 customers in northwest Indiana were still without power as of Tuesday afternoon, including more than 2,500 in Valparaiso.
Crews have been busy the past two days repairing damage, including downed wires and at least 130 broken utility poles.
After Sunday's storms, a total of about 40,000 NIPSCO customers lost power. Service has been restored to nearly 80% of those customers as of Tuesday afternoon.
One Valparaiso homeowner who was still without power said Tuesday was the first time he's checked on his sump pump since losing power on Sunday.
"Getting my sump pump, you know, getting that working. I don't have electric to it right now. I don't have a battery backup on it. So I have a generator that's a little old, and I'm hoping it starts up here and I can get that going," Eric Lucas said. "My wife's been on me about it, getting it started. You know, every winter, make sure it starts and everything else, and of course I didn't do that, but about six years ago when I bought the generator, we lost power when we lived in Tinley Park. I went to plug it in, and she comes outside and says power's on."
Lucas said he was home when the storms rolled through on Sunday, and now he's left to prepare for Wednesday's storms.
"It was really windy, and it was rain sideways, trees were flying. There was multiple garbage debris flying down the street," he said.
Lucas said he and his family stayed at a hotel on Monday night so they could take a warm shower and have electricity.
NIPSCO said they expect power to be restored to all affected customers by Thursday afternoon.
NIPSCO said they're tracking the weather for potential storms on Wednesday, concerned the weather could impact their restoration efforts and timing, and leaving some customers to rely on generators for a while longer.
Lucas said he's had no need to use the generator until now.
"It's something that nature runs its course, you know? You just gotta battle through it," he said.
