Sunita Somvanshi
Tens of thousands of residents in northwest Indiana were in survival mode on Thursday as they endured a ninth day without power, throwing out spoiled food, lining up for hot meals and searching for places to charge their phones after a deadly storm toppled trees and power lines.
In Gary, schools remained closed after the Aug. 11 storm. Residents turned to social media to find open laundromats and working Wi-Fi, while others sought food, diapers and cleaning wipes for low-income neighbors.
Northern Indiana Public Service Co. said 68,000 customers were still without power as of Thursday morning, most of them in Lake County beside the Illinois border. The utility said it had restored power to 306,500 others since Aug. 11, but full restoration was not expected until Tuesday in some places, including Gary.
“Nine days is a long time for a community to be without power,” said Courtney Page-Tan, an Indiana University Indianapolis professor who studies community resilience. Health concerns grow with each day: many people are using generators, and poor ventilation can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning, while those reliant on medical devices risk losing their charge and spoiled refrigerated food becomes a hazard.
The outage followed a storm that killed multiple people in Indiana and pushed rivers to historic crests. It is not the only recent disruption: a derecho with 90 to 100 mph winds knocked out power for more than a million across the Midwest earlier this month, and flooding in Indiana earlier this month left six dead as the White River set record crests.
Residents described exhaustion. Shatiya Hardin, a Gary hair stylist for 25 years, has been unable to open her salon since the storm. Her lower-income neighborhood initially took the outages in stride, she said, but patience is wearing thin.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that portable generators should never be run inside homes or garages, because the carbon monoxide they produce is colorless, odorless and deadly.
