Power Restoration Efforts Continue
Now into day two of efforts to recover from Monday night’s severe storms, Kosciusko REMC and NIPSCO report crews are continuing to work around the clock to restore power to well over 120,000 customers who were left in the dark.
Kosciusko REMC and additional crews worked through the night to restore power. As of 8 a.m., Katy Berger of KREMC said all but 20 customers, located south of Warsaw, have had their electric service restored. The remaining customers should be back online by this afternoon.
NIPSCO is reporting its crews have restored 87,000 of the total 121,000 outages related to Monday’s severe storms. Approximately 34,000 of the remaining customer outages (as of 5:30 a.m. CT) are predominately located in Elkhart, Lake, LaPorte and Porter counties. Local outages include 56 affected customers in Leesburg, 12 in Mentone, 76 in Milford, 76 in Nappanee, 2 in North Webster, 3 in Pierceton, 1,542 in Syracuse, 661 in Warsaw and 473 in Winona Lake.
NIPSCO has not yet given an estimated time to have all service restored, only that “it is expected to take multiple days to repair the electric system damage.” Estimated restoration times for areas with the most system damage should be available sometime today.
Both KREMC and NIPSCO have secured additional field crew support from neighboring co-ops and states to help with restoration efforts, which include replacing more than 130 broken distribution poles.
KREMC customers who need to report an outage or downed power lines should call 574-267-6331 or 1-800-790-7362.
NIPSCO customers without power can report an outage from a smart phone or other mobile device, on a computer via NIPSCO.com/OutageCenter or by calling NIPSCO Customer Service at 1-800-4NIPSCO (1-800-464-7726).