More than 76,000 people in Indiana are still without power following severe storms Thursday. The storms — which follow a series of deadly tornadoes in Indiana last week — caused approximately 202,000 outages across the state, according to a Duke Energy press release.
Liz Irwin, Government and Community Relations Manager for Duke Energy, said in an emailed press release Duke Energy, which provides power for 890,000 people in Indiana, has dispatched crews to assess the damage and restore power to areas affected by the outages. While the company had restored power to 169,000 customers by Friday morning, a new storm system went through the state later Friday and Saturday, causing 20,000 additional outages.
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“We have worked closely with Monroe County Emergency Management, Monroe County Highway Department and area first responders to coordinate efforts during storm restoration,” Irwin said in the release. “We are grateful to them and our partners at Indiana University for allowing incoming crews to stage their trucks in the stadium parking lot.”
According to the press release, crews and personnel from Duke Energy sites in Ohio, Kentucky, Florida and the Carolinas have come to Indiana to administer restoration efforts. Anthony Brown, Duke Energy’s Indiana storm director, estimates there are approximately 1,600 personnel responding across Indiana.
“We’ve made a lot of progress, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us,” Brown said in a press release. “The widespread nature of this storm, which affected nearly all of the 28 Indiana districts we serve, has made power restoration especially challenging and so have the new storm systems that have moved through the state.”
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Duke Energy estimates the company will resolve the majority of outages in Bloomfield, Columbus, Franklin, Martinsville and Vincennes by midnight Saturday. Customers in Bedford, Bloomington, Clinton, Greencastle, Princeton, Sullivan and Terre Haute may not have power until midnight Sunday, according to the release.
You can view outage maps and statuses on Duke Energy’s Indiana outage map.
To report a power outage, customers can visit duke-energy.com, text “OUT” to 57801, or call Duke Energy’s reporting system at 800-343-3525.
