Local power outages remain into Sunday

Nearly three days since a storm rolled through Indiana, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, many Putnam County residents continued to wait for the restoration of their electrical service as of Sunday evening.

According to information provided by Duke Energy, Parke County REMC and Hendricks Power, more than 2,800 local residents remained without power as of shortly before 6 p.m. Sunday.

Of these, the greatest number were Parke County REMC customers, with the Rockville-based utility reporting that outages were still affecting approximately 1,700 Putnam County customers, or about 49 percent of REMC members served in the area.

Of note, about 2,100 customers in the utility’s home county of Parke County also remained powerless, 35 percent of members there.

Duke Energy, meanwhile, reported more than 1,100 outages remaining in pockets spread throughout the county, with more than half of these centered in Greencastle.

Meanwhile, Hendricks Power customers were faring the best as of Sunday evening, with just one Fillmore-area customer with an outage remaining.

Fortunately, a series of storms that rolled through the area Saturday and into early Sunday morning did not appear to bring any new outages to the area.

Duke, the largest energy provider in the county and the state, reported that as of noon on Sunday, more than 250,000 Indiana customers had been restored to power, while 45,000 remained without.

The utility’s stated goal was to have the vast majority of this service restored before midnight on Sunday. However, Duke cautioned of the possibility of even more storms Sunday evening.

Duke reported having mobilized nearly 1,900 workers to respond to severe structural damage on the electric grid. Crews statewide have worked to address more than 110 miles of downed power lines, replace 160 broken poles, and clear more than 370 fallen trees.

Other nearby counties heavily affected by Duke’s outages include Clay, Monroe, Vermillion and Vigo.