Duke Energy, other providers, continue with power restoration process

Thank you so much to those helping with this restoration project.

I think the total number of households still without power after 2 days (according to their outage map last checked at 9:37 PM on 07/01) is somewhere around 46k.

THAT'S PATHETIC.

Someone should be prosecuted for this mess. As bad as the storms may have been lately, there's no excuse for this level of catastrophe. It's clear as day that the very last thing this company is doing is using recent (and incessant) rate hikes that nobody ever puts an end to for going towards infrastructural resiliency or disaster recovery.

we have become a spoiled lot

Thanks so much to all who worked so hard to get everyone's lights back on. You have a tuff job. You are much appreciated.

DouglasQuaid; It is so easy to criticize the Utility and their workers when there is an outage. With the storm that created this outage there were 80-100mph straight line winds. The storm was the entire length of the County taking down trees and utility poles. When the crews start the restoration process they first have to get the substations back in service, then the transmission lines, then the distribution lines and finally the customer service lines. Most substations have duel feeds so that if one goes down they can switch to the other, however if both feeds are down then they must get the transmission lines back up on which line has the lesser problems. Tree trimming is such an issue, a lot of people simply don't want their trees trimmed and actually call in the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to mediate the trimming. Take a walk through your town looking at the lines and how close the trees are, then think about how many trees would have to come down so there would be zero chance a fallen tree could touch a line or pole. The workers of the storm work 16 hours a day for the duration of restoration. Most are linemen but there are almost as many people scouting the trouble, carrying needed equipment, dispatching, and of course doing the necessary paperwork. I was by the Duke Office in Greencastle and they have many contractor crews in to help. How ever if you have a complaint call the IURC and I'm sure they will look into it.

@PutCoRes1963, there's no excuse for what's happened in this situation. The company, it's leadership, and everyone in between have had more than enough time to reinforce the utilities, incorporate better resiliency, establish backup systems, and yes, trim the **** trees. It's a shoddy company with shoddy management and it's so clear now how mismanaged it actually is. There's no planning in it whatsoever.

@beg, if anyone's spoiled, it's the companies and it's because of morons like yourself who also keep allowing this country to fall apart by nodding your head every time they whine about needing another rate hike with the assignment of 7 guys and 5 entire utility trucks just to fix one pole during situations like what we're dealing with now being the only gift we have to show for it (which I just saw happen for about 1 entire hour on Friday). It's morons like you who do nothing when companies like Duke tell you that one reason you're forced to accept the installation of smart meters is because it'll increase utility competition only to realize later on that this is nothing but a life. And again, it's morons like you who probably think $74 dollars for a 50' extension cord over at Menards is a great deal because MasterForce is "doing everything they can to help us." I hope your house falls down so that we can see whether or not the tune being blown from your whistle carries the same pitch once you're between the rock and hard place of weighing the same compassion you have now for companies like Duke and not having a home until those same companies do whatever is necessary to repair everything. Then, and only then, would we see a real you come to the surface instead of the naive idiot we see today.

Make no mistake: we pay them. They don't pay us. They're the service providers. Not us. We're not obligated to show compassion for people we're paying to receive the services they claim to provide but don't. That's called being screwed-over, and if you idiots want to be kind to people doing that to you, then that tells me that you're dismissive to those worried about things like their groceries being ruined, not having A/C during 90-degree days, not having functional sump pumps or security lights or cameras... The list goes on and on. No, I'm not going to be compassionate for Duke employees who have the unfortunate responsibility of DOING THEIR JOBS.

Evidently someone didn’t invest in a whole home generator. With human induced climate change, these storms are only going to increase in intensity and frequency, making a whole home generator a wise investment.

@Koios, right, let's instead blame home owners for lacking at-home generators instead of blaming utility companies who spent years lobbying for, and getting, their rate hikes only to see 40k+ still without power after 2 entire days of supposed repairs being made for lines and other infrastructure that they've apparently never used said rate hikes to improve and secure.

Don't presume to know the perspective that the author of a comment is speaking from. Case in point, I have an 8kW Generac. Works like a charm, and thankfully, I never needed to use it at my house for anything I have. But that's not the point, and anyone with the reading comprehension level of a 1st grader would understand that.

Man, that’s a lot of anger from someone who is apparently not really affected by this.

God Bless our utility workers and even non workers who have helped neighbors and friends struggle through these storms. And God Bless all the ones who have not had to deal with such a stressful situation but have verbally condoned our workers . May your negativity and words be on your conscious.

I'm not surprised that you're the guy who embraces the mantra of, "Not my house, not my problem." I'm sure you'll enjoy the eventual rate hikes, too, along with whatever insurance premiums they get from whatever conflations this causes.

Typical double-masker.

Dictionaries exist, Nit.

Why do I need a dictionary?

For the first 20 years of my life, I lived in a community the same size or smaller than Greencastle. It wasn't a particularly progressive town, but it had a community-owned power station, an ordinance about maintaining trees around powerlines, and somehow managed to bury most of the powerlines within the city limits.

When a factory moved into town, the city fathers purchased a smaller generator powered by a well-muffled jet engine to act as a backup to the diesel unit downtown. I would think that a city, filled with folks who are as well-educated and intelligent as the population of Greencastle and nearby communities would have something similar.

On the other hand, the town as I remember it didn't have any city murals, had an older downtown, appearance-wise, no hiking trails, and used the community schoolgrounds as a park, so you have to balance your priorities.

I asked my utility (Hendricks) to cut the trees around my power lines over a dozen times in the past decade. I even offered the tree crew money when they were in the area clearing the main lines.

I finally did it myself while the lines were down this weekend, which could easily have been avoided.

techphey, I had the opposite experience. When the powerline trimmers came by, I asked them not to trim but, instead, just drop the tree because it wasn't going to stop growing and should never have been planted beneath the line in the first place. Within minutes, the tree was down, and neighbors cut it up for firewood. I still don't understand the fascination folks have for planting trees next to powerlines, but I see it all the time.

Yes, we need to get our cities to quit destroying the earth.

I do wonder how many people it took to remove the glaciers from Indiana.