SEVERE STORMS CAUSE OUTAGES THROUGHOUT NIPSCO'S SERVICE TERRITORY

MERRILLVILLE, Ind. -- Strong storms with high winds and lightning moved through the area late Monday night causing extensive damage throughout Northern Indiana Public Service Company's (NIPSCO) electric service territory. At the storm's peak, some 25,000 customers were without power. More than 7,500 customers, mostly in the Lake, Porter and LaPorte county areas, were still without power as of 2 p.m. CST. The most severe damage was incurred in the extreme northwest part of our service territory. The hardest hit areas were Hammond, Highland, Munster, Gary, Crown Point and Cedar Lake. Additional crews, both from NIPSCO and outside contractors, are working in these areas to restore service as quickly and as safely as possible. Crews are also working in the Valparaiso, Michigan City and LaPorte areas, which also received extensive storm damage. While crews have been making good progress in restoring electric service, many broken poles, along with fallen trees on distribution lines, are making restoration more difficult. Due to the damage caused by this storm, some customers' service may not be restored until Wednesday. Scattered storm-related outages also occurred in parts of northeast Indiana, but damage was less severe and we anticipate most of these customers to have their power restored by this afternoon.

SEVERE STORMS CAUSE OUTAGES THROUGHOUT NIPSCO'S SERVICE TERRITORY

NIPSCO encourages customers to contact its Customer Service Center at 1-800-4-NIPSCO (1-800-464-7726) if they have questions or need to report an outage. We also want to remind our customers to stay away from any downed power lines until repairs can be made. We at NIPSCO would like to thank our customers for their patience as we make every effort to restore your services as quickly as possible. The media can contact Larry Graham at (219) 647-6375 for restoration updates. Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), a subsidiary of NiSource Inc., is a regulated utility that provides natural gas to nearly 700,000 customers and electricity to 416,000 customers across the northern third of Indiana. NIPSCO is the largest natural gas distribution company and the second largest electric distribution company in Indiana. Information about NiSource Inc. and its subsidiaries is available via the Internet at www.nisource.com.