Porter County Emergency Management Agency Director Lance Bella gave the Board of Commissioners a report on the Aug. 11 storm and recovery efforts Tuesday morning. He said a disaster declaration was made for Porter County the day of the storm and recovery efforts are at the halfway point.
He explained that an emergency operations center was opened the day of the storm and began receiving needs reports from across the county. By the following day a District 1 Command Center was established to meet the needs of Porter County and neighboring Lake, Newton, Jasper and LaPorte Counties.
Bella said 48 cots, 100 pillows, and 48 blankets were provided to a shelter in Portage, generators were provided to fire stations and for water pumping, and two large air conditioning units were provided to the Porter County Public Library System when one of theirs was damaged by a fallen tree. A hotline set up to receive calls for assistance received 1,600 calls.
“NIPSCO eventually came into the command center,” Bella said, and Commission Vice President Barb Regnitz, R-Center, commented that when the utility brags in its marketing materials about reliability, it needs to be able to deliver on that claim. “When they have that privilege of being a monopoly, they have a great responsibility,” she said.
By Aug. 13, Governor Mike Braun had made a disaster declaration for the state and the National Guard was brought in to Porter County to assist in opening roadways Aug. 19 and 20. They were able to clear 55 roads. Bella said a limited federal disaster declaration was made by President Donald Trump and there are hopes it will be expanded.
An Indiana Department of Correction task force was also established to clear streets with NIPSCO staff embedded to take care of downed power lines it encountered along the way. That group cleared 367 roads.
“We’ve crossed from emergency and response to what we call recovery,” Bella said.
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Each municipality in the county has been asked to name a coordinator to work with the county and groups such as the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Team, United Way and Team Rubicon, a group of retired military and first responder volunteers who are currently assisting in Lake County. Bella hopes they can help in Porter County next.
“There’s never been a time I’ve called and asked for help and not gotten it,” Bella said of the response he’s received from county leadership. The commissioners, in turn, praised Bella’s staff and the other county departments for their unwavering, uncomplaining response to the disaster.
“Tony Ferraro (Gov. Mike Braun’s incident commander) was commenting he could not believe the caliber of your team,” Regnitz told Bella. Bella said his department has three full-time staff members. “They’re on salary. They don’t receive overtime,” he explained, “and they worked countless hours.”
The rest of the EMA staff are volunteers who donated 261 hours in the aftermath of the storm, many taking time off work to do so.
Commissioner Jim Biggs, R-North, who was personally left homeless when the storm threw a tree through his living room roof, said, “There’s a lot of teams here that have to work together. Everything funneled into you guys has really been important.”
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.