A group of Indiana legislators spent nearly seven hours Monday looking at NIPSCO’s response to the Aug. 11 derecho and subsequent mass power outage, and its effect on Northwest Indiana residents.
“This hearing is about the committee understanding the issue of emergency response to off-nominal events,” said state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, who was the chair of the statehouse’s Interim Study Committee on Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications. “And we’ve had a very severe one, so this is the first time we have done a hearing like this on an off-nominal event.”
The committee passed a report with recommendations from the group for future Indiana General Assembly legislation. Recommendations include requiring utilities to submit written procedures for power restoration after an emergency to the IURC and for the commission to conduct a field audit of vegetation management once every two years.
The report passed in a 12-0 vote, with state Sens. J.D. Ford, D-Indianapolis, and Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, excused.
The study committee was scheduled to meet from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday at the statehouse in Indianapolis. However, it ran about two hours behind schedule due to added presentations and testimony from NIPSCO President and COO Vince Parisi; United Steelworkers Local 12775 President Ryan Baker; and Gary Mayor Eddie Melton.
“I am not simply here as mayor, but as someone that lived this,” Melton said during his testimony about the storm’s effect on the city. “We experienced something that was unseen before. The storm brought extreme, straight-line winds, downed trees and power lines, destroyed homes, damaged vehicles and flooding.”
Melton told the committee that Gary has completed about 75% of its storm debris cleanup, and it’s picked up about 280,000 cubic yards of tree debris. The estimated cleanup cost is about $8 million, he added.
Gary residents were without power for about two weeks following the Aug. 11 derecho. Melton told the committee Tuesday that he supported their work and the investigation the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission is conducting.
“The prolonged restoration experience for my residents in Gary for over two weeks, and throughout Northwest Indiana, deserves a thorough investigation,” Melton said.
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State Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, asked Tuesday why the meeting was not held in Northwest Indiana. Pierce also asked if the IURC planned to host field hearings in the region, which Chair Anthony Swinger said will happen as part of the investigation.
“It’s one thing to have experts talk about raw statistics,” Pierce said. “I think sometimes it’s helpful to just have people’s individual stories about when their power’s out, what their frustrations were and how the whole thing played out.”
Soliday told Pierce that they had considered holding the meeting in Northwest Indiana, but there’d been “significant threats” which would mean they’d need “significant security.” He also said there was debate over where the hearing would be and that there would later be an IURC investigation.
“Taking all of those things into consideration, we decided this was the place to do it,” Soliday said.
The committee also reviewed annual reports from the IURC and Office of Utility Consumer Counselor, and several presentations about extreme weather events, vegetation management and outage response.
During his presentation, Parisi told the committee that about 100,000 customers had power restored within the first 48 hours after the storm. By day 10, about 93% of its customers had power restored, and 99% had power by day 12.
“But we recognize if you’re one of the customers who remained without electric service for a week, 10 days or even two weeks, those statistics don’t matter,” Parisi said.
The storm has raised questions about the reliability of NIPSCO’s electric system, Parisi said.
In a statement Tuesday, a NIPSCO representative said the utility company appreciated the opportunity to join and give the committee a clear picture of what happened, its preparation and response, and commitment to learning and implementing improvements.
The statement called the storm “an unprecedented weather event” that “caused extraordinary damage.” More than 4,000 NIPSCO employees, contractors, mutual assistance crews and emergency responders worked to restore power.
“We’re actively reviewing our response to identify actions that can strengthen our preparedness going forward and are engaging a third-party firm to evaluate our response,” the statement said. “NIPSCO will continue investing in our electric system and making changes where needed to better serve customers during future storms.”
Baker said his union members were at the center of NIPSCO’s efforts to restore power. In the past several years, the number of NIPSCO linemen has decreased by about 20%, Baker said.
“NIPSCO has allowed this critical role to trip to levels not seen this low for at least the past 15 years,” he added. “After the storm blew through and mangled the system, 50 extra line workers would have provided an extra 800 man-hours per day of experts (working) on our system efficiently and safely restoring power. We ask you to think about that for a second and the impact that could have had.”
About 25 legislators and members of the public signed up to speak on the extended power outages during Tuesday’s meeting. Soliday allowed legislators to speak first and asked for testimony to be about four minutes.
State Sen. Mark Spencer, D-Gary, said now is the time to ask what can be learned from the storm.
“They’re serious questions about preparedness, infrastructure, restoration capacity and communication,” Spencer said. “We have to ask questions such as, ‘Were we prepared as we reasonably could have been? Did the systems and investments intended to support reliable service and restoration perform as they were designed to perform?’”
Spencer said the August storm changed how he will prepare going forward; he keeps emergency food and water available and intends to start his generator once a month.
State Rep. Ragen Hatcher, D-Gary, said she went without power for two weeks following the derecho. Hatcher is also executive director of the Gary Sanitary District, which lost power at its wastewater treatment facility, the second largest in the state. Hatcher said the facility has never lost power before.
“This is not simply an outage of one municipal building,” she added. “It affects critical regional infrastructure that must operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
The facility receives power through two substations through NIPSCO, Hatcher said, and before the storm, there was a known problem with transfer equipment between the plant and substations. Problems were not fixed before the storms, Hatcher said; when they lost power, they couldn’t transfer to its alternate electric service.
Hatcher said they’re still waiting on answers from NIPSCO about the issues with the wastewater plant’s power. She added that governments, companies and residents need a better plan for future outages.
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“When a customer of a regulated utility goes days or weeks without electricity, it loses basic necessities as a result,” she said. “Who should bear that cost?”
State Rep. Earl Harris, D-East Chicago, was also among legislators who testified Tuesday. The Aug. 11 storm has been called the worst disaster in Indiana, Harris said.
Communication didn’t happen as well as it should have during the power outage, he said. Legislators received calls from concerned residents during the outages.
Without communication, Harris said misinformation spreads.
“The reason why we, as legislators, received those calls was because they’re not getting the communication they need — in this case — from NIPSCO,” Harris said. “Even if the answer is, ‘We don’t know yet, we haven’t worked out a timeline for your city yet.’ Some sort of communication needed to be in place.”
Other Northwest Indiana officials who testified include state Reps. Vernon Smith, D-Gary; Randy Novak, D-Michigan City; Mike Andrade, D-Munster; and Carolyn Jackson, D-Hammond.
Matt Parr, communications director for the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, testified at the Tuesday meeting. Before the meeting, Parr provided his testimony to the Post-Tribune, which was about six pages.
Parr raised concerns with Blackstone, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, which has about a 20% ownership stake in NIPSCO.
The firm owns QTS Data Centers, which Parr said is one of the largest data center companies in the country. Blackstone also owns disaster recovery firms and grid service companies that are brought in for emergency grid repair.
“The firm has financial interests on multiple sides of the electrical system here in Indiana,” Parr said. “… As the legislature examines NIPSCO’s response to the storm, I urge the legislature to consider Blackstone’s role as well, including whether its influence over the workforce, maintenance, reliability and investment decisions contributed to the problems that we face up in Northwest Indiana.”
John Reed, Highland town attorney, testified Tuesday, detailing the toll it took on residents, including loss of power for about two weeks and having to find alternative living arrangements. Reed said the town’s central fire station lost power and had it back within five days because of a generator.
“The station was then not prioritized over the residential homes in the same neighborhood to get the station up and running so they could respond to emergencies,” Reed said. “No power, no built-in phone, no built-in alarm for seven days.”
Griffith Police Chief Albert Tharp said he was concerned about NIPSCO’s lack of communication during the power outages. Communication with government officials didn’t start until about a week into the outages, Tharp said, adding that it was the biggest problem to him.
“Then those meetings ended before every citizen got power back,” Tharp said. “To me, everybody worked every day of this incident. Why wasn’t NIPSCO doing that?”
Tharp also said that NIPSCO representatives said Griffith would see major improvements on Aug. 18, which was a Tuesday, but they didn’t see major improvements from the power outages until the following weekend.
Schererville resident Anthony Oberman said although the utility couldn’t prevent the derecho, it was in charge of what happened next. He said it’s important that the legislature and other state officials take action to ensure NIPSCO is more prepared for the next major storm.
“Hundreds of thousands lost power, homes were damaged, schools delayed opening, and some Northwest Indiana families waited nearly two weeks for electricity to be restored,” he said. “For those families, it wasn’t an inconvenience; it was a complete disruption of their lives.”