FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 01, 2002
| FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION | |
| Dave Ryan, Manager NIPSCO Communications & Community Relations (219) 647-6378 (Northwest Region) Chris Taelman, Manager NIPSCO Communications & Community Relations (574) 284-2151 (Northeast Region) |
MERRILLVILLE, Ind.--- Northern Indiana Public Service Company crews continue to make progress in restoring electricity to customers who were affected by Wednesday night's storm and a second round of ice damage on Thursday afternoon. Heavy accumulation of ice downed power lines and damaged trees, which caused extensive damage to a widespread area across NIPSCO's service territory.
As of 8 o'clock this morning approximately 1,800 customers in Lake, Porter, and LaPorte counties remained without power. In the areas surrounding Plymouth, Goshen, Warsaw and Angola, the number was about 11,500 customers.
"Crews were working to restore the first group of customers who lost power after the storm, then we lost a second wave of customers to additional ice damage in the late afternoon," said Tom Retseck, NIPSCO manager, Service Operations. "Although high winds today may cause additional outages, we have added crews from outside Indiana to the restoration effort. We expect to have most of the remaining customers back on tonight, however due to the extent of the damage, some areas on the east side of the service territory won't likely be restored until sometime Saturday."
NIPSCO will provide additional information as restoration activities continue. NIPSCO has increased staffing in its contact center to provide coverage for customers who continue to experience outages.
Customers also are reminded to keep away from all downed power lines, and to report such incidents to our phone center at 1-800-4-NIPSCO (1-800-464-7726).
NIPSCO, with headquarters in Merrillville, Ind., is one of the 10 energy distribution companies of NiSource Inc. (NYSE: NI). With approximately 670,000 natural gas customers and 430,000 electric customers across the northern third of Indiana, NIPSCO is the largest natural gas distribution company, and the second largest electric distribution company, in the state. NiSource distribution companies serve 3.6 million natural gas and electric customers primarily in nine states. More information about NIPSCO is available at www.nipsco.com.