Justin White was headed home to the 900 block of S 475 W outside of Hebron after picking up his son from a friend’s house Thursday night.
“He said, ‘Are we going home with that?’” White recounted 12-year-old Gavin asking as they raced the funnel home. “I said, ‘Yeah. We got to go get your mom.’”
White drove right onto the lawn and around the back and parked his car parallel to the house so they could jump out and run in the back door. Gavin went down to the basement with his mom.
“I got a five-second clip (from the main level) before it blew the windows out and I ran in the basement with him,” Justin said Friday morning.
Residents from throughout Northwest Indiana are assessing the damage and cleaning up after the National Weather Service confirmed tornadoes swept through the area after doing the same in Illinois, leaving thousands of people without power.
None of the impacted communities reported any fatalities, though a semi driver was injured in Merrillville.
An EF3 tornado, which has estimated wind speeds between 136 and 165 mph, caused extensive damage in the Kouts area Thursday night, a National Weather Service crew reported Friday.
Weather service crews were checking out damage in Merrillville, Hebron, Kouts and areas in between on Friday.
“We basically drive up and down the whole path of rotation,” senior meteorologist Brett Borchardt said.
The weather service had reports of tornadoes near Lowell, Hebron, Boone Grove and Wanatah.
Gusts up to 76 mph were reported in Town of Pines and 56 mph in Ogden Dunes, with flooding reported in Crown Point and elsewhere.
Friday afternoon, NIPSCO reported 52,603 customers without power because of Thursday’s storms, down from 86,640 total. That’s after restoring power to about 95% of the 21,500 customers affected by Wednesday’s storm.
Because of the extent of the damage, NIPSCO couldn’t provide estimated times for restoring power. Customers in areas hit hardest should be prepared to be without power for more than one day, NIPSCO said.
To report an outage, text OUT to 444111, visit nipsco.com/outages or use NIPSCO’s mobile app.
Scott Pelath, executive director of the Kankakee River Basin and Yellow River Basin Development Commission, was headed to the rivers to check for debris in the channel that could impede the flow of water and cause flooding.
“We got between three and six times the normal precipitation for the last seven days,” Pelath said, but he doesn’t expect any major flooding along the Kankakee River, though he added, “There’s going to be some cleanup work to do.”
Damage in south Porter County
South Porter County saw more damage than it has in a long time. Several homes were severely damaged or destroyed along Baums Bridge Road and Ind. 49 in Kouts, and there was also much damage in Hebron farm country.
Justin White said after he and his son got home, everyone was safe, but the best-laid plans to protect his property didn’t quite work out. “What’s my roof, three weeks old? We did the standing-seam for high winds,” he said. “It must have worked because it actually ripped the plywood and it stayed on.”
The plywood flew somewhere, and one corner of his second floor has no roof. All the drywall was soaked in that room. A mature tree trunk was thrown onto the front passenger side of White’s car not long after he and his son jumped out.
“We watched it. We watched it develop. We literally just came skidding up. My wife said, ‘Get in the basement!’ We weren’t here 20 seconds before it all happened,” White recounted.
Friday morning, he was laughing at his naivete the night before. “Looking at it, I was like, ‘Eh, we’ll be fine.’ I was like, ‘It ain’t a monster or anything.’”
The house fared better than the shop next door, owned by White’s friend Ryan Kats. Kats grows a couple hundred acres of grass for Kats Sod Farm. He also lost an irrigation pivot, but is hoping the sod harvester is salvageable.
“It will be cosmetic, I hope,” Kats said of the machine. “It’s just got a lot of busted glass and bent metal.”
A handful of neighbors and friends were helping him unearth equipment from the ruined shop building. “I didn’t call anybody. They just showed up,” he said. “I got about 50 text messages.”
Edward Schrey rode down on his lawn mower from a mile-and-a-half up the road. His house was untouched. “It’s just funny how it jumped,” he said. “I guess it just kind of followed the (Kankakee) river.
“I was just out by my pond and I didn’t lose any trees,” he added. “One year I lost 125 trees from a wind shear. This is all floodplain. Originally, this was all the Kankakee Marsh right where you’re standing.”
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Porter County Sheriff Jeff Balon said in a social media post Friday morning that while storms and tornadoes devastated some of the county’s communities, “I thank God that we have not had any reported fatalities.”
He also said he was proud of first responders, highway workers, utility crews and community members who came to assist people impacted by the storms.
Going forward, Balon said the sheriff’s department will have extra officers, both uniformed and in plain clothes, saturating the impacted areas of Porter County to assist citizens. Balon also said officers will be on the lookout for scammers, looters and others out to take advantage of people impacted by the storm.
Andrean High School, homes damaged in Merrillville
In Merrillville, residents grappled with heavy damage to their homes.
Maria Williams was up as the sun rose early Friday morning, inspecting the damage at her family’s home in her blue scrubs. Broken wood and foam insulation scattered the front lawn, and a large tree torn out by its roots rested in the grass. The roof was in shambles.
“Four of my five kids have grown up in this house,” Williams said, her eyes pooling with tears. “So (I’m) just trying to figure out what it’s gonna look like again. If I can even rebuild it.”
Williams, who works as a psychiatric nurse practitioner in Chicago, said she was about to start her shift Thursday night when her daughter Kari called, telling her that she believed a tornado hit their house.
Kari Williams didn’t realize what had happened at first, the 20-year-old said. Not until she heard the wind. She and her 12-year-old brother were watching Netflix, and they didn’t know that storms were poised to sweep through Merrillville.
“Both me and my brother got blown back,” she said. They tried to go down to their basement but there were cracks in the ceiling, so they fled upstairs and stayed with a neighbor for the night.
After her daughter called, Williams couldn’t focus on the long drive home or her pending shift — all she thought about was getting back. It was dark when she arrived, and they had no power, she said. She couldn’t make out just how hard they’d been hit.
In the morning, though, the loss set in.
“I don’t even know what to say,” the 40-year-old said. “Words can’t even.”
“I worked so hard for the little bit I do … and it’s just, it’s just gone,” she added.
Merrillville’s Andrean High School, which ended classes for the summer about two weeks ago, also sustained heavy damage. The school’s windows were cracked, some shattered, while the roof had peeled off in places. Downed power lines covered a stretch of road in front of the building.
When James Myers, the Catholic school’s director of facilities, left the campus around 6 p.m. Thursday everything was intact. He started to grow worried during his drive home when the weather alerts piled up, though.
When pictures of the damage popped up on Facebook, he knew he had to head back. He hoped the impact wouldn’t be more than a few downed trees and broken windows. But what he found around 9:30 p.m. was devastating, so much so that he went straight to the chapel and said a prayer.
“It literally is just so overwhelming,” he said.
Myers spent the rest of the night working to remove debris with a retired Andrean employee who’d raced to lend a hand. By mid-morning Friday, Myers was still out doing what he could to help, though he knows it will likely be a long process.
“I mean, you could spend weeks here with 30 guys (and be) cleaning up still,” he said.
All three of Myers’ kids are students at Andrean. His focus is on figuring out a way to get students back in school somehow, he said.
Officials at Andrean High School ruled its grounds off-limits Friday and all activities at the school have been postponed, rescheduled or relocated. In a social media post, they asked people to stay away from campus while they assess the damage, mitigate safety risks and determine next steps.
A social media post by the school said no one was at Andrean, at 5959 Broadway, during the violent storm. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office said an officer and a police dog searched Andrean to make sure no one was there.
Social media photos showed damage to the school’s baseball field and nearby scoreboard. Andrean’s 3A No. 1-ranked baseball team plays DeKalb at 1:30 p.m. in LaPorte. It practiced at another site on Friday.
“The damage at Andrean High School is incredibly sad. The Diocese of Gary office is working with the school’s administration to assess the damage and determine next steps. There will be layers of work to be done, and it will take many hands to put the pieces together. I am grateful for the outpouring of support we are seeing from the Andrean community and across the Region,” Colleen Brewer, superintendent for the schools in the Gary diocese, said in an email to the Post-Tribune.
The damage came as Andrean continues its development of a master plan for renovations and improvements. In 2024, the Dean and Barbara White Family Foundation presented a $150 million gift to the Diocese of Gary.
“We have already been embarking on implementing a strategic plan, which includes creating a campus master plan. A disaster such as this will have us come together as a team to reevaluate our immediate campus needs in order to continue offering the students at Andrean an excellent high school experience focused on learning and faith,” Brewer said.
Friday morning, the town of Merrillville provided an update on storm damage on social media.
“More than 200 buildings have sustained some sort of damage during Thursday’s storm, some of which (were) destroyed,” the town announcement said. “Much of the damage involved residential areas. Andrean High School also sustained heavy damage. There have been no reported injuries due to the storm and the damage it caused.”
One person had a minor injury due to a semi truck that flipped, according to Merrillville’s announcement, but the town did not specify where.
The town’s page encouraged anyone needing assistance to reach out to the American Red Cross or the Ross Township Trustee’s Office. The Red Cross’ phone number is (800) 733-2767, and the trustee’s office phone number is (219) 769-2111.
The Red Cross established a shelter with 700 beds at the Lincoln Center in Highland.
Clothing, toiletries and food donations can be dropped off at the Ross Township Trustee’s Office, 26 W. 73rd Ave.
Police officers with the Lake County Sheriff’s Department responded to at least a dozen calls for service related to the severe weather, according to a release from Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr.
Officers also voluntarily assisted the Merrillville Police Department with door-to-door checks, looking for residents in need of assistance.
Elsewhere in Lake County, Martinez said another off-duty officer assisted with a vehicle fire on I-65 in the Lowell / Eagle Creek Township area. Police officers also assisted a few motorists who were stranded by transporting them to safe locations.
“The intensity of last night’s storms threatened our community, and I am incredibly grateful for the dedication and professionalism displayed by our officers,” Martinez said.
Portage assesses damage
Portage Mayor Austin Bonta said, like elsewhere, the city had “a lot of trees down all over the place.”
Willow Creek and Samuelson Pond both overflowed, unable to absorb all the rainfall after a month with a lot of precipitation before Thursday’s storms.
Bonta was coordinating with Portage Township Trustee Brendan Clancy for any emergency needs, like people on oxygen during a power outage, he said.
Portage got hit hard north of Central Avenue, Police Chief Michael Candiano said, with tons of trees down and some damage to yards and homes. Power was out throughout the city’s north side.
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“City services worked really hard last night and were able to get a decent amount of the roads back open,” he said.
Portage Utilities Superintendent Tracie Marshall said her crews worked hard Thursday night, addressing alarms and other issues at the wastewater treatment plant during the storm. The tree damage hit some of the solar panels installed at the plant last year.
The nearby campground and mobile home park also got hit, though her team couldn’t access the sites because of downed power lines.
“You can see the path. It was either a microburst or something,” she said.
After the storm, neighbors and family members checked on each other.
Bonta said his mother reported that a neighbor’s house sustained some damage, but at her house, even the patio furniture pillows were undisturbed. “I truly don’t know how weather works.”
Storm disrupts transit
The South Shore Line suspended service overnight, with President David Dech and other employees using minibuses and personal vehicles to transport about 150 passengers stuck on trains to their final destinations, Chief Experience and Engagement Officer Nicole Barker said Friday. They were still at it as late as 1 a.m.
“Everybody got where they needed to go, and that was good,” she said.
Service was suspended while NIPSCO and South Shore Line crews could assess the damage. Some trees were down and poles on fire, and wires were down in the Ogden Dunes area, Barker said.
Gary Public Transportation Corp. suspended its Broadway Metro Express service for much of Friday because of road closures and downed powerlines, but expected to start service again at 4 p.m. Friday.
Post-Tribune freelance reporters Shelley Jones, Doug Ross and Carole Carlson, reporter Maya Wilkins, and baiduhai reporters Tess Kenny and Rebecca Johnson contributed.