The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission’s investigation of NIPSCO following the Aug. 11 derecho should include an examination of staffing levels, the Portage City Council agreed Tuesday.
Shawn Lindsey, representing United Steelworkers Local 12275, offered the draft resolution to the City Council on Tuesday and made the employees’ case for it.
“We are not asking this council to decide how many linemen NISPCO should employ,” he said. “We are not asking you to determine, before the evidence is reviewed, that staffing caused the prolonged outages. We are asking for a much narrower and more reasonable action: support an independent examination of whether NIPSCO had adequate qualified staffing to prepare for, respond to and restore electric service after a major storm,” he said.
“If staffing played no role, NIPSCO’s records should establish that. If staffing did play a role, Portage residents deserve to know,” Lindsey stressed.
The Aug. 11 storm knocked out power to 387,100 NIPSCO customers, some of them for weeks.
“Staffing is inseparable from restoration,” Lindsey said. “Equipment does not restore itself.”
Lindsey said the Gary line department, which serves Portage, Gary, Merrillville, Hobart, Lake Station and New Chicago, had roughly 30 linemen in the early 2000s. Today, it’s about nine or 10. That’s a reduction of roughly 67% to 70%.
Gary lost about 4% of its households in that period, but the surrounding communities saw an increase of more than 20%, from 40,100 in 2000 to about 48,200 today. “Portage alone grew from 12,746 households in 2000 to 14,938 in the Census Bureau’s 2020-2024 estimate – about 17% growth,” he said.
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Even when the number of households shrinks, the electrical infrastructure isn’t necessarily removed, Lindsey pointed out. And when new subdivisions and commercial buildings are built, that adds to the permanent infrastructure that must be operated, inspected, maintained, repaired, upgraded and restored for decades.
“The disparity is striking,” Lindsey said. “Around 2000, about 78,390 households divided by 30 linemen equals roughly 2,600 area households per lineman. Today, about 75,300 households divided by the midpoint of 9.5 linemen equals roughly 7,900 households per lineman.”
That’s about three times the household-to-lineman ratio of the early 2000s.
“Mutual aid is essential during catastrophic events, but mutual aid should supplement local preparedness,” he said. “Outside crews arrive after the disaster and may not have the same familiarity with local circuits, switching procedures, facilities, geography and operating conditions. Experienced local employees provide institutional knowledge when the system is under its greatest stress.”
“We know that you guys worked diligently with everything in your power,” Lindsey said.
“I definitely support this myself,” Mayor Austin Bonta said.
Council President Victoria Vasquez, R-3rd, asked if the decline in staffing caused any physical or mental impact on workers, such as sleep deprivation.
Over 35 days, Lindsey said, he worked 28 to 29 double shifts.
“I had trees laying on my own home,” he said, and wasn’t able to help his wife deal with all that because he was spending so many extra hours on the job.
“We are called out for emergencies seven days a week, endlessly,” Lindsey said.
Councilwoman Penny Ambler, R-4th, abstained; all other council members voted for the resolution.
That discussion came after a series of accolades for the local response to the storm.
Bonta read a proclamation recognizing employee Haley Mack for coordinating various responses, including volunteers. She will be awarded the key to the city.
“We could not have done it without you,” Bonta said. “My only regret is we don’t have the physical key yet because it is still being made.”
“One of the greatest parts of the city is we all come together to help each other,” Mack said. The recognition “means all the world to me.”
“I’d be here all night if I put together all the wonderful things I could say about Haley,” Bonta said.
State Sen. Rodney Pol Jr. and state Rep. Chuck Moseley had their own proclamation to hand out. Pol noted the “millions and millions of dollars that were lost” because of the storm’s ferocity.
“Certain people really stood up and really came together for the community,” he said. “When you stand up for your community, you stand shoulder to shoulder with people in your community to do great things.”
Northwest Indiana needs leaders like Portage has to put things together and watch people follow, Pol said. “Haley, you were one of these folks,” along with others.
“At one point or another, I saw all of you out in the community,” he told the council.
Even people like Bob DeRuntz, who doesn’t even live in Portage, were in the city often to volunteer to help remove fallen trees, Pol said.
Driving through the city, visitors can see areas that look like an excavator did the clearing, but it took the storm’s hurricane-force winds only 20 minutes to do it.
Portage’s response “showed not just the Calumet Region but the entire state of Indiana what a great community looks like,” Moseley said. He’s lived in Portage since 1978 but has never seen a community come together as Portage did after the storm, he said.
“We’ll be talking about these stories for generations,” Pol said.
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Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.