This story was originally published in Capital B Gary.
The president of NIPSCO apologized to the people of Gary and others on Tuesday for not including their cities in a plan that it published to restore power days after the Aug. 11 storm.
The company did not intend to deprioritize those cities, which included Portage, Lake Station, and Griffith, but did not include them because it was still assessing their damage and was unable to offer an estimated time of restoration then, said Vince Parisi, the company’s president and chief operating officer.
“We did not want to provide an estimate that we could not substantiate. But we should have communicated that more effectively to our customers at that time and I’m sorry for any confusion that caused,” Parisi said.
Parisi offered the apology while speaking at the Indiana Statehouse on Tuesday as part of lawmakers’ first public look into the storm.
The hearing revealed new insights about why Gary went without power for two to three weeks after the storm. It also presented NIPSCO’s plan for figuring out what went wrong and what they might have been able to do better. And it offered insight into some of the changes that lawmakers are considering instituting to ensure more efficient responses to future power outages.
Tempers flared at times as participants grappled with the physical and psychological toll of the storm, which left thousands of Gary residents without electricity for a prolonged period. More than 7 weeks afterward, feelings were still raw about what happened. On more than one occasion, the chair of the committee reminded speakers to keep their tone and comments respectful as they gave testimony.
Ten members of the public were allowed to speak, including five from Gary. Carolyn McCrady of Gary made the bus ride down to Indianapolis with roughly 20 other Gary and Northwest Indiana residents, and she spoke candidly during her allotted time on the House floor.
“I can tell you that people in Gary are angry,” McCrady told the audience. “Angry because our bills are too high and scared also that the next storm will cause as much or even more destruction. We are particularly worried about the coming winter months, when a blackout like the one we just experienced would threaten the very lives of many people who do not have generators or other options to survive without heat.”
The hearing follows news last week that state regulators have begun an official investigation into NIPSCO’s response to the storm. That one could last years. But Parisi said the utility’s internal investigation of the storm would be complete by Thanksgiving. NIPSCO also said it was hiring a third party to conduct an independent investigation.
Still, NIPSCO’s testimony Tuesday shed more light on what went wrong. Vegetation management “wasn’t the issue” during the storm, Parisi told the committee that held the meeting, the Interim Study Committee on Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications.
Parisi said utility poles failed because they were meant to withstand 55 mph winds, not the 100 mph gusts that came with the storm. NIPSCO said 1,500 utility poles were damaged during the storm, whereas in the five previous storms, the average number of damaged poles was 90.
Gary took the brunt of the damage, ending up with more outages than any other community in Northwest Indiana, Parisi said.
Asked by a senator how many poles fell because trees pulled down power lines versus how many were snapped by the wind, Parisi said he didn’t have that data and has yet to look at the age of the poles that failed.
A Gary resident who spoke during the public comment period contested Parisi’s narrative that overgrown trees did not contribute to power outages.
“I’ve been in my home for 15 years now, and NIPSCO has never come out [to trim trees],” Sherry Smith, 65, told Capital B Gary. “I have a huge NIPSCO pole and heavy trees in my yard.”
NIPSCO is also facing a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing the company of negligent vegetation management. The lawsuit, Tipold v. NIPSCO, was moved last week at the utility’s request from Porter County to U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana in Hammond.
Ryan Baker, president of United Steelworkers Local 12775, which represents NIPSCO workers, testified that the utility’s staffing choices contributed to the prolonged power outage in Northwest Indiana. With 183 linemen, NIPSCO has fewer than at any time in the past 15 years, he said. The company has lost 50 linemen since 2020, he added.
“As we’ve seen staffing levels decrease, we’re finding it harder and harder to get our two resources matched up,” Baker explained. “So there may be line crews to restore the circuit, [but] there’s not a substation electrician available to restore the service, or vice versa. You may have the substation electrician available at one of the sites, but not a line crew to finish the assessing and repair work.”
During the recovery period immediately following the storm, NIPSCO contracted with electric crews from across the South and Midwest to repair the lines. Parisi told lawmakers NIPSCO relies on contract crews at times “for affordability reasons.” Baker said contractors usually cost more, and those costs get passed on to ratepayers.
Parisi’s apology was the second one the company gave to Gary about the list. The first apology came during a press conference involving Melody Birmingham, executive vice president and utilities group president for NIPSCO parent company NiSource Inc.
Gary Mayor Eddie Melton, a former NIPSCO employee, asked lawmakers to require utilities statewide to provide restoration estimates for all communities. (Calvin Davis/Capital B)Gary Mayor Eddie Melton, a former NIPSCO employee, asked lawmakers to require utilities statewide to provide restoration estimates for all communities so that local officials can keep residents informed.
As an update, Melton said the city has cleared 75% to 80% of an estimated 280,000 cubic yards of tree debris at an estimated cost of $8 million. He cited ongoing hardships such as residents who cannot afford to remove trees from the tops of their homes as well as a small restaurant that sustained nearly $19,000 in damages and lost revenue.
No new legislation was proposed Tuesday, but lawmakers discussed possibly requiring utilities to maintain sufficient staffing and to provide more precise, community-specific restoration estimates during a power outage.
State Rep. Carolyn Jackson, who represents portions of Hammond, near the Illinois border, said ComEd customers just across State Line Road had their power back much earlier than Indiana residents.
“How is it that one state can be so much better prepared when the storm was just as bad over there as it was here?”