Gunfire Halts NIPSCO Repair Crews in Gary as Northwest Indiana Power Outages Drag Into Fifth Day

A NIPSCO crew vehicle was hit by gunfire Friday night in Gary while utility workers tried to restore power to a city that has been among the hardest hit by this week's storms, forcing the company to pull crews off the streets for nearly a day.

No one was hurt. Video shared with reporters showed two large holes in the vehicle's blown-out rear window and additional bullet marks on the passenger side. NIPSCO said in a statement that it was "aware of a serious incident overnight in Gary involving our crews supporting our ongoing storm restoration efforts" and that it was working with law enforcement while it evaluated how to keep its workers safe. Restoration activity in Gary stopped entirely while the company sorted out security.

Gary Mayor Eddie Melton called the shooting unacceptable and said state troopers would be added to the streets to protect crews going forward.

"Let me be clear: this type of violence is absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated in the City of Gary," Melton said. "These crews are here for one reason, to help our residents and restore electricity to families who have already endured days without power." Melton said he understood residents' frustration but stressed that threatening the people trying to fix the grid only slows the work down further.

Crews resumed work around 5 p.m. Saturday after what NIPSCO described as close coordination with the Gary Police Department and Indiana State Police. Authorities have not said where the shots came from or released information about a suspect.

The shooting happened as Gary residents entered their fifth straight day without electricity following Tuesday's derecho, which tore through the Chicago area and northwest Indiana with damaging straight-line winds. The National Weather Service confirmed six tornadoes touched down in the Chicago region that day. NIPSCO described the damage to its grid as "unprecedented," saying more than 300,000 customers, over 60% of its electric base, lost power at the peak of the outages. The utility called it one of the largest outage events in company history.

Gary reported more outages than any other community NIPSCO serves, with more than 33,000 customers still dark as of Saturday morning. Systemwide, the number of affected customers had fallen from roughly 317,000 at the peak on Thursday to about 158,000 by Saturday morning, as crews worked around the clock. NIPSCO said it had restored service to more than 163,000 customers since the storms hit Tuesday.

NASA satellite images comparing northwest Indiana on the Sunday before the storms to Thursday night showed large stretches of the region without light. NIPSCO pointed to the images as a way of showing how widespread the grid failure had been.

Across northwest Indiana, residents without air conditioning or refrigeration in mid-August heat have been checking on neighbors and sharing generators while trading updates on which streets have had power restored. Some of that cooperation has come alongside frustration over how long the outages have lasted.

The outages and the attack on the NIPSCO vehicle came during a week when storm cleanup stretched across the wider Chicago region. In the south suburbs, Gov. JB Pritzker toured tornado damage in Lansing on Thursday, where downed trees had crushed a bedroom window and torn up driveways along Illinois Street. Pritzker faced criticism from Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey for not visiting damaged areas sooner, but said he waited so as not to interfere with damage assessments the state needs to complete before it can seek a federal disaster declaration. He said the Illinois Emergency Management Agency has been on the ground working with local governments and that any federal disaster declaration requires documentation before it can go to the federal government for assistance.

More rain moved through the Chicago area over the weekend, with a Level 1 severe weather risk and a flood warning for Cook County rivers in effect into Saturday afternoon. Isolated flooding was possible into Saturday afternoon, with another chance of storms Sunday, which could add to the delays facing cleanup crews and utility workers.

NIPSCO says restoring the roughly 158,000 remaining outages, including Gary's 33,000, is its focus, with state police now stationed alongside repair crews in the city. The utility has not given a firm date for full restoration, and Melton's office has not said whether the added security presence will remain in place beyond the immediate recovery effort.