The newborn baby didn’t understand why he was sitting in the dark.
As power outages in northwest Indiana dragged on for over a week, Alyssa Casalin said her 2-month-old boy grew increasingly restless. She struggled to see the baby when he cried at night, hoping her flashlight would turn on. Changing a diaper wasn’t easy. Neither was properly storing milk.
She drove around frequently during the day. It helped calm her son and allowed her to look for open stores to buy food. But she couldn’t be out too long because of long lines at gas stations.
“It was just a lot of screaming from him,” said Casalin, 19, who lives in Portage. “You got to keep your composure to be a mom, and you know keep (him) calm because he doesn’t know any better.”
Tens of thousands of others across northwest Indiana have endured more than a week without power since the Aug. 11 storm knocked more than 300,000 Northern Indiana Public Service Co. customers off the grid. Residents say they’re rationing gas and, at times, losing faith that the power will ever come back on. Even some celebrities, such as actor George Lopez and food influencer Keith Lee, have talked about the ongoing struggle for residents.
“We have not gotten any help, any updates. No nothing,” said Gary resident Antoinette Edwards, 46. “It would be great if someone could communicate and say something, even send out a mass call or text. I feel like we’ve been left in the dark. I feel like we’ve been left behind.”
The outage number jumped Thursday afternoon after electrical wires were observed on the ground near Indianapolis Boulevard and Main Street in Schererville; traffic signals were out at U.S. 30 and 41 as well. As of 4 p.m. Thursday, NIPSCO’s outage tracker listed 68,000 customers who remain without power because of the storms, including 26,880 in Gary, a majority-Black city that’s been hit particularly hard.
And many may have to keep waiting for days. Power isn’t expected to be mostly restored in Gary and Portage until next Tuesday. Munster not until Monday, while Hammond and Highland are expected to get power on Saturday.
“These aren’t simple repairs,” Melody Birmingham, an executive at NIPSCO’s parent company, said at a Wednesday news conference. “These are systems that are being rebuilt. These are lines that ordinarily take us, and systems that ordinarily take weeks or months that we are trying to accomplish in days and/or weeks.”
She acknowledged the frustration and impatience many residents may feel, with tensions even erupting into violence after someone fired gunshots at NIPSCO workers. No one was injured in the Aug. 14 shooting and no arrests have been made, police said.
Birmingham maintained that crews are working as quickly as possible to restore power. NIPSCO has restored power to 306,000 customers since the storm hit on Aug. 11.
Casalin said she was sleeping when the storm began and woke up when the sirens went off. At first she thought she was dreaming. She looked outside the window and saw a car tire lifting up from the winds. Her mom joked on FaceTime that the power would go out.
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“I go turn the bathroom light on, and it cuts out,” Casalin said. “We just recently had a storm before that, where our power went out for like a day, but it came back on. But then it went from one day to two days, three days, all the way up to nine days.”
Indeed, there’s been a record-breaking number of tornadoes and repeated damaging thunderstorms this year.
Casalin’s power was restored Wednesday night, an immense relief, she said. She finally got a full night of sleep and was able to take a shower. She hopes electricity will be restored quickly for her neighbors, comparing the situation to “zombie land.”
“It’s really sad. I really hope it doesn’t happen again,” she said.
Portage residents are encouraged to call Indiana 211 to report damage and see if they’re available for assistance through the State Disaster Relief Fund. The city can also help those without access to a phone or internet. More than 70 volunteers handed out tarps, bottled water, flashlights, toys and more at Haven Hollow Park in Portage Township on Wednesday.
The community has been “constantly responding” to residents’ needs in the storm’s aftermath, said Portage Township Trustee Brendan Clancy.
Gary residents hit hard
Other moms were struggling in Gary. Kelsey Taylor said she’s been at home with her four kids since the storm hit. Her youngest is just 3 months old. She breastfeeds her child and has had to rely on generators to charge her breast pump.
“We thought (the power) would be gone for this couple days,” Taylor, 32, said. “I was in the house for four days after the storm and when I finally got in the car and drove around, I was just like: Oh, yeah. We’re not getting power for a while.”
The sounds of generators humming and chain saws whirling filled the neighborhood Thursday afternoon. There were large piles of tree trunks, sticks and leaves on the streets.
Odis Leeny, 21, was outside his home cleaning up his yard. Leeny has generators, but said he rations them because of the price of gas. He’s also had to buy cases of water bottles because without power he couldn’t use a well.
Inside Charles Strohmeyer’s home, the temperature rose quickly to over 80 degrees without air conditioning. He’s opened the front doors to let air inside but it’s still like a “sauna,” he said, especially for the dogs.
The 55-year-old, who moved to Gary a few years ago, said he doesn’t have a generator because he can’t afford one. He had to throw the meat out in his freezer just a day ago because it started to smell. There was no way to prepare for an outage like this one, he said.
“I’m really distraught to be honest. I’m upset at the same time,” he said. “How can you actually live like this?”
Mayor Eddie Melton said he wants to make it clear that “Gary has not been left behind.”
“We have support,” he said at Wednesday’s news conference. “We have had linemen working every single day throughout this entire storm.”
The city partnered with AT&T, waiving overage charges and providing unlimited talk, text and data for eligible customers. The company also provided residents with device charging lockers at Red Cross-supported shelters. Various churches also stepped up to distribute free food and supplies.
The 21st Century Charter School opened its doors Wednesday, while Gary Community School Corp. schools remain closed, without power.
Birmingham said large uprooted trees along with other damage from 99 mph winds in Gary has made it challenging to restore service. There were 291 utility poles and 44 transmission poles that required significant repairs. She said it has nothing to do with any sort of socioeconomic divide.
“This is truly, truly a situation of where the storms hit,” she said. “We have areas that are probably affluent where we still have customers out as well.”
“We would not, we have not and should not ever prioritize how we respond based on color, based on socioeconomic status,” Birmingham added.
Chris Kellum, a line worker from North Carolina contracted to repair storm damage, said he’s seen his fair share of downed trees and power lines. He previously worked to restore power in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene in 2024, then spent two weeks in Florida after Hurricane Milton.
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“Especially with the straight winds, which is always a huge problem, and sideways winds, and then the aftermath of tornadoes, it’s pretty catastrophic,” Kellum said.
Crews worked Thursday putting up wooden poles to run new power lines from to reestablish power, he said.
Birmingham said ComEd customers got their power back quicker because of a number of factors. She said the infrastructure and network is different, and that storms also affected the areas differently.
“The impact that came through the trees, the infrastructure, the access — that’s the difference,” she said.
Christian Lutes, of Highland, said it’s still incredibly frustrating to pay so much for electricity and have such prolonged outages. She thinks NIPSCO should invest more money into infrastructure and tree maintenance.
“We’re watching our neighbors get power back and have the resources to really start moving forward with life while people here are suffering,” the 37-year-old said.
Carolina Rodriguez, of Highland, said before the storms hit she received a disconnection notice from NIPSCO. She paid her bill just to have the power go off anyway.
“I paid the bill — that left me short — so they wouldn’t shut my light off, and then we don’t have it,” the 47-year-old single mom said.
Lutes said she got her power back Wednesday night after nine stressful days. By this point the food in her fridge rotted and her basement flooded. She was living out of a cooler. But she considered herself lucky because her job in digital marketing is pretty flexible and she had support from family and friends.
“I would spend hours in a gas line and then in line for ice and all of those things,” she said.
They also had a small gas leak and couldn’t immediately get through to 911 or NIPSCO so they had to shut off the gas themselves. It was quite “scary,” she said, but she was more worried about her in-laws, who live in Munster.
Their power still hasn’t been restored.
“My in-laws are both diabetic, and they didn’t have access to a refrigerator for days for their insulin,” she said. “And I know they’re not the only ones in that situation.”
The Post Tribune’s Carole Carlson and Maya Wilkins contributed.