Gary Mayor Eddie Melton (left), and NIPSCO’s Melody Birmingham at Wednesday’s press conference

Gary’s estimated time of recovery shifts to August 25th

Contributed By: The 411 News

Frustration is one of the words most often on the tongue of Gary Mayor Eddie Melton, and other municipal leaders have used it, too, following the severe weather patterns of August 11th that brought tornadoes and near 100mph winds to northwest Indiana and communities in northeastern Illinois.

Now, it is day 10 for thousands of northwest Indiana residents waiting to have electrical power restored to their homes and businesses.

They want relief from the uncertainty and costs of power outages. Prolonged power outages are costly: foods have to be replaced, temporary housing may be necessary, and time is lost at work.

Wednesday afternoon, NIPSCO‘s Executive Vice President Melody Birmingham was in Gary to give an update on the utility’s progress in restoring power to its 35,000 customers in the city. Prior to the press conference, Birmingham had met with the mayor and community leaders.

Power has been restored to 13,800 customers in Gary; 22,000 NIPSCO customers in Gary are still without power.

“When a NIPSCO post on Facebook listed the estimated time of recovery (ETR) for communities, it didn’t include Gary,” Melton said. “It caused a lot of frustration and a lot of questions from residents. That’s why we are here today.”

When that announcement was made Sunday, August 16, Birmingham said, “We didn’t have confidence in estimating the recovery time for Gary.”

Gary had the most damage from the storm, because of its large land size and the historic size of the storm. NIPSCO has nearly 500,000 customers in northern Indiana – 317,000 or 60 percent were affected with power outages. NIPSCO said this is the largest power outage in its history.

Gary has the most utility poles needing repair or replacement and the most substations needing repair or replacement.

NIPSCO had previously announced that 90 percent of its customers would have power by Tuesday, August 18 and all of its customers would have power by August 21. Birmingham said, “Now, Gary’s estimated time of recovery is August 25.”

Was the longer length of time to restore Gary a “socio-economic divide?” Birmingham was asked. “This isn’t. Affluent areas have the same devastation and outage,” she replied. Power hasn’t been restored fully to Munster, an affluent area.

Birmingham was asked: “Why did Commonwealth Edison (in Illinois) get it done and you didn’t?”

“The trees, infrastructure, and access; that’s the difference,” she answered.

Mayor Melton said the large apartment complexes, West Brook and Wood Lake Village are starting to come online.

Story Posted:08/20/2026