GARY, Ind. — Things became all-too familiar for Kimya Williams after storms rumbled through Gary, Indiana, earlier this month leaving big chunks of the mostly Black city in the dark for two weeks.
The power outage reminded the 50-year-old of what she experienced in New Orleans in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina knocked out electricity to many.
Williams’ home was one of more than 38,300 homes and businesses in Gary to lose power from the Aug. 11 storms. She initially tried to stick it out and stay put, but the darkness got the best of her and Williams’ left for Indianapolis to stay with her children.
“It was too triggering. It was too dark,” Williams told The Associated Press Monday.
On Monday, one of the poorest and blackest cities in America still had no power. The day before, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton called the pace of restoration “unacceptable.”
“We’re at day 12 and 12 days is too long for families to be without power, 12 days is too long for parents to worry about their children and for businesses to lose revenue,” Melton said in an update to the community.
Northern Indiana Public Service Co., the area’s electricity provider, said Monday that more than 370,000 customers lost power and that more than 364,000 have had their service restored. The remaining customers should have power back by Tuesday.
“Our teams are assigned to outages large and small, and we remain committed to reaching every affected customer in all of our communities,” the company said. “No outage is being overlooked, and no customer will be left behind as we continue this restoration effort.”
As the Indiana residents awaited restoration of their service, roughly 34,000 customers in the majority-Black city of Memphis were still without power as of late Monday afternoon, after storms swept through the city on Saturday, according to information on Memphis Light, Gas and Water’s website. The utility said that figure represents less than 8% of its customers.
Some residents were comparing the situation to Gary.
Lawsuit filed after long outages
A resident in neighboring Porter County filed a lawsuit in state court last week accusing NIPSCO of negligence and requesting a class action for residents of Indiana who have suffered as a result. The complaint said the utility company failed to maintain trees and other vegetation hazards growing near its power lines, a failure that “predictably” resulted in the recent outage and others after storms caused the vegetation to fall on the lines.
In a written statement, NIPSCO strongly disagrees with the characterization of their vegetation management practices and will “vigorously defend” itself in court, the company said in a statement. The vegetation management process is overseen by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun on Monday said he has directed the state consumer advocate to petition for an investigation into NIPSCO’s preparation for, and response to, recent prolonged power outages caused by severe weather.
The investigation also is to look into whether the utility “adequately maintained vegetation and cleared rights-of-way to protect its infrastructure and whether funding approved by state regulators for infrastructure and reliability improvements was spent as promised,” Braun said.
Decades of disinvestment worsen weather impacts
Experts have noted that in cases of severe weather, natural disasters and especially extreme heat, the poor are most vulnerable.
Gary, like many northern rust-belt cities, has suffered for decades from disinvestment following the loss of population and industries. About 55,000 of the city’s 69,000 residents are Black, with more than 29% of the population living in poverty, according to the Census’ 2024 American Community Survey.
The poverty rate for Indiana is about 12%.
Gary’s estimated median household income of about $40,752 was far below the $71,959 for the rest of the state.
The more well-off a person is financially, the more options they have when faced with severe weather and natural disasters, said Stephen Pantano, senior vice president of market transformation for the Urban Land Institute’s Impact Lab.
“Some people don’t have the luxury of owning a car to drive somewhere else or having access to a place to go that’s outside of their immediate community where there might still be power,” he said.
The problems likely are to increase as climate risks grow.
“It’s a matter of where the lightning strikes on any given day as to which specific community is hit,” Pantano said. “Gary’s number came up this time, but it’s going to be another city next time. And the problem with aging infrastructure and disinvestment tends to accentuate the impacts when they hit communities that have been experiencing those problems for a long time.”
Residents, white and Black, await improvements
Williams, who is Black and describes herself as low-income, did what she could to save the food in her home.
“I used my car battery as a generator,” she said. “I plugged my refrigerator into an inverter. I learned that from Katrina.”
That was a last-gasp effort. Williams, who returned from Indianapolis after learning her power was back on Sunday, said the food still went bad.
“My house smells like mold and mildew,” she said.
Gary’s troubles didn’t start with the storms and run much deeper than the outages, said Erin Carreon, who is pursuing a doctorate in social work at the University of Chicago.
She said white flight and the scaling back of jobs and closures of steel factories contributed to decades of disinvestment in Gary.
“I grew up in Gary and social inequality was very evident to me,” she said Monday. “Seeing how the city has been neglected over the years has been very central to my life.”
Carreon, 40, is white and lives in the city. She also has been without power since the storms hit.
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Associated Press video journalist Laura Bargfeld in Gary, Indiana, and AP writer Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story.
