Gary, Indiana’s Power Outages Aren’t Because Of Racism
Utility mismanagement, aging infrastructure, and a land-based hurricane are the real reasons some Gary residents don’t have power.
The ongoing power outages in Gary, Indiana, are not due to “racism,” as celebrities and other uninformed commentators would have you believe.
Rather, the power outages, now stretching beyond two weeks, are more likely due to poor utility decisions and the predictable effects of a land-based hurricane hitting Northwest Indiana.
On August 11, a derecho hit Chicago’s south suburbs and Northwest Indiana. Lake County and surrounding areas were hit by tornadoes, 99 MPH winds, and a punishing downpour. Around 95% of customers of the utility company, Northern Indiana Public Service Company, or NIPSCO, lost power on August 11.
Three more brutal storms hit the area within the following days, intensifying and even backtracking progress made on restoring power to more than 300,000 residents. Contractors from other states were brought in to assist with cleanup and power restoration.
An August 14 shooting at a NIPSCO employee also delayed repair work in Gary.
Most of my neighbors and I were without power for 10 days, until Friday, August 21, when a contractor from Florida restored power.
While I was able to work from my parents’ home in an Illinois suburb, my generator and others’ were regularly running to power freezers, refrigerators, and lighting for us and our neighbors. Other friends remained without power for several days after. They lived in majority-white towns like Hobart, which is also near Gary.
Majority white towns like Munster and Schererville were also brutally hit.
But the chattering classes have been quick to cry racism as some in Gary remain without power.
gary indiana has been w/o power for 11 days. gary indiana is 76% Black. yet another example of environmental racism, its so fucking disgusting.
— conny (@BlvckJxsus) August 22, 2026
Here is the truth of what is happening.
Gary, Indiana, is a hollowed-out city that has lost 100,000 residents since 1960. Steel town closures led many residents to leave, including Michael Jackson’s family. This has left around 15,000 abandoned homes in Gary, with many streets blighted with boarded-up homes. I attend Mass 2 miles from Gary and have regularly visited the city because the cathedral for the Diocese of Gary is, of course, there.
That leaves a situation where there are few homeowners getting overgrown trees and vegetation cut back or completely removed. That growth then sits on power lines, waiting to tear them down with each storm.
Context is also needed. One reason Gary had the most power outages is that it is the second-largest city in Lake County. If almost an entire county loses power, it only follows that the largest cities will have the most power outages.
Similarly, utility company NIPSCO faces accusations from Governor Mike Braun and others of not cutting back enough vegetation and upgrading infrastructure. I can attest that the utility company sent around contractors a year ago ostensibly to cut back branches overhanging wires. They surveyed the trees but never returned to my house.
For years, the company has faced accusations of increasing costs without a clear increase in quality. A perusal of the posts in the 37,000-member Facebook group “NIPSCO Monopoly Madness” will tell you everything you need to know.
NIPSCO’s grid is also susceptible to downed power lines, because many of the wires are above ground.
In June, a tornado touched down in Merrillville, which borders Gary. It knocked out trees and windows at the local Catholic high school, Andrean. Our church was without power for Sunday Mass.
Here’s what the power line mess looked like soon after that June storm, from a photo someone sent me.
All this suggests a company that is overwhelmed and behind on technology. My own town, which is mostly white, complained of a lack of resources from NIPSCO.
Leaders from the white-majority town of Griffith, which is also near Gary, made similar complaints. A lack of response from the utility company prompted Griffith and Munster officials to move forward on their own work, with the latter allocating money to hire private contractors to clean up fallen trees.
Race hustlers want to declare “racism.”
That would let NIPSCO off the hook for what is more likely incompetence and poor planning – and all residents would suffer from that lack of accountability.
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Comments
Above ground power lines ain’t a huge issue, that’s all we have in my rural county. Part of the reason for why it isn’t a problem is ongoing tree removal and limb clearing around power lines. The utilities do it in each area every 3-5 years on a schedule in unincorporated areas. In municipal areas the city does it. On private property the homeowners do it themselves or contract it out b./c it is their responsibility from the ‘street pole’ to the house. Where a property owner refuses then the utility/municipal govt gets an abatement order, performs the work and bills the property owner and if unpaid puts a lien on the property.
I read elsewhere reports of gunfire at utility crews which was contributing to the slowed efforts to restore power. Were those stories accurate or just rumors run wild?
At least one of the stories was accurate. Though (fortunately) the gunfire was not.
Wrong.
Gary Mayor Eddie Melton confirmed that gunfire hit a vehicle belonging to a NIPSCO utility crew who were working to restore power to residents. – ABC Chicago, WLS channel 7, 8/15/26
Both NIPSCO and Gary Mayor Eddie D. Melton issued statements Saturday saying that during the overnight hours on Aug. 14, a NIPSCO vehicle that was being used by crews to restore power to Gary residents was hit by gunfire. -NBC Indianapolis, WTHR channel 13, 8/15/26
Video shows NIPSCO crew car damaged in shooting during Gary power outage. – NBC Chicago, channel 5, 8/16/26
One bullet went through the back window and lodged in the headrest.
mjm, GWB was saying the _gunfire_ was inaccurate, not the _story_.
Of course they shot it. It was a white power truck.
“”On private property the homeowners do it themselves or contract it out b./c it is their responsibility from the ‘street pole’ to the house.””
I guess it depends on the company. Here, they’re responsible to the meter and clear the lines at their expense.
That power pole is shaped like a wooden cross. If it burns, power is lost.
Boom. Racism.
Every black problem is someone elses fault. I think victimhood has become a way of life for many of them. It became a problem after obama’s reign and there seems to be no end in sight.
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” – Booker T. Washington, 1911
“”Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.””
The very definition of a bureaucrat.
Nevertheless racism will be the go-to excuse.
Remember: Communist politicians, voters and media NEVER connect what they vote for with what they get. Instead, we get (1) contempt-producing lies that everything is going great and “the Right” is hallucinating, or (2) wailing that things are a disaster and it is all the fault of “the Right”.
Too fatigued to comment further.
“We are expected to… wait for urgency to arrive.”
If you order within 6 hours and 17 minutes, we can add some learing to your scheduled Friday delivery,
Gary IN is the armpit of the Great Lakes.
That is not true. One of my math teachers assured me that it was Hammond.
So tired of the perpetually dishonest, self-aggrandizing, narcissistic and infantile whining and complaining from these corrosive and parasitic rabble-rousers and race agitators in the black community.
By definition, “a hurricane is a type of storm called a tropical cyclone, which forms over tropical or subtropical waters.”
Somehow I doubt that a “hurricane” that formed in the tropics made it all the way up to Indiana.
(Also, hurricane strength is measured by the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale scale, and not the Beaufort scale.)
source: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/hurricane.html
Long outages are not caused by racism.
It can be argued that the lack of maintenance is caused by “greed” and “customer indifference” by the power companies.
In Florida, if you have vegetation in / over a power line, you call the power company and they send a crew out within a week to ten days.
The reason is that hurricane / tropical storm hits happen every year in Florida and the damage is exacerbated by overgrown vegetation. It costs more to fix than to maintain.
The Maryland power company of BGE recently announced they were cutting back / limiting / ending maintenance on lines, including trimming back vegetation. The reason is economic. It costs more to maintain lines than it does to repair after a once in a decade large storm.
I would bet the same thing happened in Gary and other parts of the state. The power company made a decision to not do, or limit maintenance because that costs more than repair after a large storm. Now they are caught with a public relations nightmare.
But I would guess that after this, NIPSCO will go the the Public Service Commission and ask for a rate increase.
As I said……”corporate greed” and “indifference to the customer.”
In the 2010s, a hurricane made landfall in Alabama. It swept up the Mississippi valley, the rains caused flooding in Illinois and the winds caused power outages all across Ohio.
As of right now, there have been three (3) hurricanes this season.
None have made it anywhere close to Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, etc. Two storms have only brushed the coast of Texas and the third was in the Atlantic and never made land which means that that storm that hit Indiana was not a hurricane.
Furthermore, in 2010, the only storm that came close to Ohio was Tropical Storm Hermaine which lasted from September 5 – 9. When it got to the areas of which you speak, it was a tropical depression, not even close to a hurricane.
Hurricanes require a great deal of energy to maintain their force. That energy is gotten from the warm seas / oceans / etc. Once on land, hurricanes drop in force tremendously.
Here’s the data from 2010 if you want to look at it, including the tracks of all the storms that year.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/index.php?season=2010&basin=atl
Derecho
Hurricane force wind is not the same as a hurricane.
Hmmmm…..It is kind of interesting that according to “PowerOutage.com” (which has always been reliable for power outages) there are only 640 customers of NIPSCO without power and of those, only 502 in Lake County (as of this writing.)
source: https://poweroutage.us/area/state/indiana
Depends on the definition of “customer”. Around here (San Antonio, TX), 200 families without power are sometimes considered a single customer – when they all live in the same apartment complex.
Good point.
After I hit “submit,” I realized that I had equated “customers” to what the site tracks which is “accounts.”
Still, 502 accounts (now down to 320) is not that greats of a number.
The software likely tracks the primary part of the address – 123 Main Street – but not the secondary part – Apt. 101. So you wind up with one “customer” but not multiple accounts. My apartment complex has something like 20 buildings, with eight to sixteen apartments in each, plus the office, the maintenance shack, the pools, the sports court, etc. 200+ accounts, but the software only sees one “customer” – 123 Main Street. BTW, we had a minor outage this morning. I checked online, “9 customers affected”. Within 100 yards of my apartment complex are five more complexes, a strip center, a high school, and several single-family residences.
I have a home in the south Chicago suburbs. We were hit by the same derecho. We were without power about 7 hours. Our village is reasonably good about tree trimming and maintenance but we had a LOT of downed trees. This was one powerful storm.
The Midwest is going to have storms, each and every year. Utilities, villages and property owners need to plan and need to do maintenance. Sounds like NIPSCO isn’t good at that.
Oh, and don’t shoot at the people trying to bring the power back on.
Supposedly FEMA will be by to give you a $750 loan with your property as collateral. We have been waiting here in Georgia for 2 years.
As incompetent as NIPSCO may be, they don’t deserve to be shot at.
Law enforcement should have announced they would not allow utility crews back into the area until whoever shot at them was in police custody. If the community wants to live in civilized conditions, they need to reject the barbarians among them.
Gary>South Africa IndianaDemocrats have been inciting racial hatred and violence for political gain for 200+ years.
Every “crisis” is seen as an opportunity.
I wonder what the racial composition of utility repair crews is? Because if it’s not at least 76% Black, then that’s proof that the utility workers are racist.
This racial stuff is just utter nonsense and garbage…these loons see everything as racism…it’s totally counterproductive…and it’s on purpose…helps shift the focus off of the real problems.
I am originally born poor white in the 50s in California last by 6 years. My parents put all of us out of the house to find life when we graduated HS. I found a job in the early 70s with the phone company in Watts to pay for life and college.
After I finished college the person that was replacing me in Watts came from Gary, IN. I explained my crew had been attacked always, that I almost got shot in a drive-by, and my former Black boss was shot. The person from Gary thought the area was nice and I asked why? He explained they lost about 7 shot per year off poles and that was why he left.
From what I’ve read, it definitely IS because of racism! When white lineman trying to restore power is shot at because of his color, that is the definition of racism. So Gary will remain a ‘dark’ area.