(INDIANAPOLIS) – Thousands of Hoosiers are without power thanks to Wednesday’s high winds, and some are likely to remain blacked out into Thanksgiving.
The National Weather Service reports wind gusts of 60 miles an hour or more in Indianapolis and Crawfordsville, with sustained winds of more than 20 miles an hour. At one point, 60,000 customers were without power across the state.
Duke Energy says it restored power to about two-thirds of its affected customers by mid-afternoon, but Indianapolis Power and Light vice president Joe Bentley says continued high winds in Indy at times knocked out power faster than crews can restore it. It’s also slowed the pace of repairs, because safety concerns prevent workers from going up in bucket trucks.
Bentley says 200 IPL workers will remain on the job nonstop until power is restored. But he says some people are likely to be without electricity into Thanksgiving.
Bentley says all substations remain on line, but circuit breakers blew at some substations, affecting hundreds of customers at once. The utility gives those outages priority over downed power lines affecting handfuls of homes apiece.
About 35,000 IPL customers were still without power at mid-afternoon Tuesday.
(Photo: Eric Berman/WIBC)
