FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 7, 2003

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

Morning Storms Knock Out Power to Over 30,000
18,000 Customers Remain Without Power as of 3:00 p.m.

MERRILLVILLE, Ind. --- A new line of powerful storms moved across NIPSCO's service territory this morning, causing extensive damage and interrupting service to an additional 30,000 NIPSCO customer late this morning.

As of 3:00 p.m. today NIPSCO crews had reduced the number of outages to 18,000.

The storms moved into northwest Indiana at approximately 9:30 a.m. and continued east across northern Indiana with high winds and lightning, bringing down wires and trees and snapping utility poles.

Damage to NIPSCO's electric distribution system and outages occurred across all of the utility's electric service territory.

Crews will be working continuously until all customers have power restored. NIPSCO expects to have customers in the Crown Point and Hammond areas back in service by midnight. Customers in other outage areas across NIPSCO's service territory may not have all service restored until late Tuesday afternoon.

The severe weather began to cause significant outages for NIPSCO customers late Friday afternoon and continued into the early morning hours today, mainly in 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.