Escalation: State officials confirm record power outage

Indiana is dealing with the largest power outage in its recorded history. About 267,000 customers were out on Thursday, and nearly 200,000 were still without service by Friday morning. Within NIPSCO’s territory, outages reached about 275,000 customers on Wednesday morning and totaled about 313,000 over the event, the biggest in the utility’s history.

The outages followed a derecho that swept from Iowa into northern Indiana, with a 99 mph wind gust recorded at Gary/Chicago International Airport. Survey teams confirmed multiple EF-1 tornadoes around the Chicago area, with two tracking into Lake County, Indiana. Lake County was among the hardest hit, with more than three quarters of customers initially in the dark, and damage spanning poles, lines and substations across nearly all of NIPSCO’s electric service territory.

Crews brought in more than 1,200 additional contractors to repair damaged substations, poles and lines. Restoration is projected to take days in some communities. Progress has been slowed by renewed storms and flash flooding in Lake, Porter, Jasper and Newton counties, where rainfall near Roselawn approached 3 inches in under an hour and roads were blocked by water, trees and fallen wires.

AI-synthesized from multiple reported sources