![Indiana's Worst Blackout in Modern History](https://cdn.slatesource.com/a/f/7/af7844ac-8fb4-4941-b545-d85bcfd40082.webp) # Indiana's Worst Blackout in Modern History - [Made in Slatesource](https://slatesource.com/@steph/indiana-s-worst-blackout-in-modern-history) - By [Steph](https://slatesource.com/@steph) - Created on Aug 22, 2026 Peak outages (NIPSCO, Aug 11-22) 374,500 cumulative customers Still without power (Aug 21) 41,026 customers Maximum wind gust recorded 99 mph in Gary Share of NIPSCO customer base affected Over 60% at peak Deaths 7 confirmed (Indiana DHS, Aug 21) Days without power, worst-affected areas 9 days and counting Counties in state disaster declaration 53 of Indiana's 92 ## 338,000 Outages. NIPSCO Has Never Seen Anything Like This. On the morning of August 11, 2026, a derecho crossed from Illinois into northwest Indiana carrying straight-line winds of 99 mph in Gary and spawning at least eight confirmed tornadoes. By the time it cleared, roughly 313,000 NIPSCO customers had lost power, more than 60% of the utility's entire customer base. Over the following days, a second round of storms on August 12 and a transmission equipment failure added further outages, pushing the cumulative total to 374,500. NIPSCO said it plainly: "What our crews have encountered since Tuesday's storms is unlike anything NIPSCO has experienced in modern history." Before August 11, the utility's prior large events were measured in tens of thousands of outages. This storm erased that scale entirely. The damage is infrastructural, not just logistical. In Gary alone, approximately 300 distribution poles and 44 transmission poles must be repaired or replaced before the grid can hold. Crews had to work around flooded roads, downed trees, tang ![](https://cdn.slatesource.com/a/f/7/af7844ac-8fb4-4941-b545-d85bcfd40082.webp) ## "It Is Clearly Not Just a Gary Situation" The outage has landed unevenly. Lake County, and Gary specifically, bore the heaviest and longest-lasting damage, for reasons that track the geography of the grid: Gary sits at the edge of the service territory, its older distribution network took some of the worst structural damage, and repeated secondary failures have slowed restoration that had, in some areas, already been completed once. Governor Mike Braun requested a major federal disaster declaration on August 20, citing seven fatalities and damage across 25 counties. National Emergency Declaration 3651 was issued covering 53 Indiana counties and activating the State Disaster Relief Fund under Executive Order 26-21. Schools in Gary's district have been closed since August 13. The scale of the outage was visible from space. NASA compared Black Marble nighttime satellite imagery taken on August 9 and August 13 and found the region's characteristic glow had largely vanished, with roughly 317,000 darkened customers matching the fo > I want to reiterate this is clearly not just a Gary situation. It is a northwest Indiana situation. ## What a 99-mph Derecho Actually Does to a Grid A derecho is not a hurricane. It does not announce itself a week in advance. It is a long-lived, bow-shaped line of thunderstorms that can travel hundreds of miles at freeway speed, delivering peak gusts comparable to a Category 2 hurricane across a corridor that may be 50 to 100 miles wide. The Storm Prediction Center classifies derechos by the sustained area of wind damage they produce, and the August 11 event met that threshold across northern Illinois and northwest Indiana simultaneously. The particular brutality of derecho damage for utilities is that it is geographically diffuse. A hurricane makes landfall at one point; crews can pre-stage equipment and advance toward the damage. A derecho hits everything at once. Substations, transmission lines, distribution poles, and service drops can all be damaged in the same hour across a service territory that takes days to drive. There is no logical sequence for restoration, only triage. NIPSCO's initial estimate was 90% of customers re > If I run out of ice, that is several hundred dollars of insulin just ruined. I spend about $75 a day on generator fuel. What this exposes. The Indiana derecho is a stress test the grid failed visibly. The United States has roughly 6 million miles of power lines, most of them above ground and vulnerable to exactly this kind of wind event. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives the national grid a C- on its infrastructure report card. Federal infrastructure spending from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $65 billion for grid upgrades, but most projects are multi-year and the money does not hard [NPR: Survival mode, Indiana residents endure a ninth day without power](https://www.npr.org/2026/08/21/g-s1-139527/indiana-storm-outages?utm_source=slatesource) [NWI Times: NIPSCO, northwest Indiana storm caused largest outage in company history](https://nwitimes.com/news/local/weather/article_dfe399b3-21b9-4092-a8d0-e936ce03ebb2.html?utm_source=slatesource)