FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 7, 2003

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
 
Larry Graham, Manager
NIPSCO Communications & Community Relations
(260) 439-1330

NIPSCO Storm Restoration Efforts Continue
Damaging Winds, Rain Knock Out Power to 10,000 at Storm's Peak

MERRILLVILLE, Ind. --- Approximately 780 customers, primarily in Lake and Marshall (Plymouth) Counties, remain without power as of 8:00 this morning (CST) as NIPSCO crews continue restoration efforts following this weekend's series of severe thunderstorms and strong winds that traveled across the Midwest. Severe storms that moved across Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio over the weekend left hundreds of thousands of customers without power.

The remaining outages are isolated or individual outages with localized damage, which take more time to restore. We anticipate the majority of these customers to be back on line by the end of the day today. We do expect, however, that some new damage or new outages could be reported from additional storms forecasted to occur throughout the day.

The severe weather began to cause significant outages for NIPSCO customers late Friday afternoon and continued into the early morning hours today, mainly in the Lake, Porter, Marshall and LaPorte county areas. Other areas also experienced scattered power outages.

At the peak period Sunday evening, over 10,000 customers were without power. NIPSCO crews have been working since Friday afternoon to restore power as intermittent heavy rains and strong winds continued to bring down power lines and cause outages across the service territory.

Customers are cautioned not to touch any downed power lines and to contact 1-800-4-NIPSCO to report outages through our automated phone system. Crews will continue to work diligently and safely to restore power as quickly as possible. We appreciate our customers' patience during the restoration period.

NIPSCO, with headquarters in Merrillville, Ind., is one of the 10 energy distribution companies of NiSource Inc. (NYSE: NI). With nearly 700,000 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 3.7 million natural gas and electric customers primarily in nine states. More information about NIPSCO is available at www.nipsco.com.