08/17/2026
🚨 NIPSCO FINALLY DROPPED THE RESTORATION TIMES. HERE IS EVERY COMMUNITY THEY LISTED AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.
After nearly a week of waiting, NIPSCO released its first community specific restoration estimates at 9 p.m. Sunday night.
I went directly through NIPSCO’s official update because there are a lot of numbers and screenshots floating around right now, and I want this to be as accurate as possible.
First, there is one VERY important distinction.
These are the times when NIPSCO expects a majority of the remaining customers in each community to have power restored.
NIPSCO is NOT promising that every individual home will have electricity by these deadlines. Some individual outages may extend beyond these times, and the estimates can change as crews continue assessing damage.
Here is every community NIPSCO included in tonight’s release.
⚡ TUESDAY, AUGUST 18 BY 11:59 P.M.
Beverly Shores
Cedar Lake
Crown Point
Hanna
Hebron
Kouts
La Porte
Long Beach
Lowell
Michigan City
Saint John
Schneider
Sumava Resorts
Union Mills
⚡ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19 BY 5 P.M.
DeMotte
Hobart
Kingsbury
Kingsford Heights
Merrillville
Michiana Shores
Mill Creek
Porter
Rolling Prairie
Shelby
Wanatah
Westville
⚡ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19 BY 11:59 P.M.
Chesterton
Dyer
Schererville
Valparaiso
Now for the towns everybody is going to immediately notice are missing.
Portage, Gary, Griffith, Hammond, Highland, Munster, East Chicago, Whiting, Lake Station, New Chicago, Burns Harbor, Ogden Dunes and several other Northwest Indiana communities do NOT have their own individual restoration time listed in this first release.
That does NOT mean those communities have been forgotten.
NIPSCO specifically says that if your city is not listed, it is either part of a larger service area represented by one of the cities listed above or is still under assessment.
NIPSCO says crews are continuing to address outages in those communities and that more precise city related restoration estimates will be released as damage assessments are completed.
So please do NOT take an unlisted town and automatically assign it the Friday deadline. NIPSCO did not say that.
Here is the larger picture as of 9 p.m. Sunday, August 16.
NIPSCO reports approximately 119,000 customers are still without power.
Approximately 219,000 customers have been restored since this historic storm event began.
Because additional storms continued causing new outages throughout the week, NIPSCO has now recorded approximately 338,000 total outages from August 11 through August 16.
Of the original approximately 301,000 customers affected by Tuesday’s historic storm, 73% have now been restored.
That leaves approximately 81,500 customers from Tuesday’s original outage event still without power.
NIPSCO’s overall systemwide targets remain unchanged.
Approximately 90% of customers are expected to be restored by Tuesday, August 18 at 11:59 p.m.
Approximately 100% are expected to be restored by Friday, August 21 at 11:59 p.m.
Thousands of NIPSCO employees, contractors, mutual assistance personnel, affiliated Columbia Gas employees and members of the Indiana National Guard continue working throughout the restoration area.
NIPSCO Electric Operations will remain in emergency response mode through Friday, August 21. During that period, storm restoration remains the highest priority, some nonemergency electrical work may be delayed, and NIPSCO says service disconnections for nonpayment will not be performed.
There is another important warning for people whose electricity has finally returned.
NIPSCO says some customers may experience intermittent outages during the restoration process because portions of the electrical system sometimes have to be temporarily deenergized so crews can safely make additional repairs or restore other customers.
One more thing is worth repeating.
If your neighbor has electricity and you do not, that does not necessarily mean something has gone wrong. Homes across the street from one another can be connected to different circuits, and individual damage to a service line or weatherhead can also prevent a home from being restored with the surrounding neighborhood.
For everyone still sitting in the dark tonight, at least we finally have something more specific than the systemwide Tuesday and Friday estimates.
For those of us in Portage, Gary, Griffith, Hammond, Highland, Munster and the other communities that still do not have an individual estimate, we are still waiting for our turn.
NIPSCO’s next scheduled official update is 7 a.m. Monday morning.
If they release additional restoration times for the missing communities, I will share them as soon as they become available.
👇 DROP YOUR TOWN AND NEAREST MAJOR INTERSECTION IN THE COMMENTS AND LET EVERYONE KNOW WHETHER YOUR POWER IS ON OR OFF.
If your electricity came back Sunday, let your neighbors know where.
After almost a week of this, that little bit of information might give somebody a little bit of hope tonight. ❤️
