A Majority‑Black City is Left in the Dark

When the winds tore through Gary, Indiana on August 11 at nearly a hundred miles an hour, the storm carried a name many people had never heard before: derecho.

A derecho is a long, fast‑moving windstorm born from powerful thunderstorms. Its winds don’t twist like a tornado; they surge forward in one direction, sometimes for hundreds of miles. This one began in the Upper Midwest, strengthened as it crossed northern Illinois, blasted through Chicago, then intensified again as it entered northwest Indiana, where Gary took some of the worst impacts. From there, it continued across Indiana, Ohio, and into parts of Pennsylvania, still carrying destructive straight‑line winds.

Midwest Slammed by Violent Summer Storms

The monster storm system knocked out power to more than a million customers across four states.

Power lines snapped. Substations failed. Entire neighborhoods went dark. In Gary, Indiana, full restoration isn’t expected until August 25. That means families are still living without the basic things many people take for granted. Without electricity, gas pumps don’t work. Without gas, cars stay parked and generators go silent. People who can afford to run a generator spend seventy‑five dollars a day just to keep food cold. People who can’t are left watching groceries spoil and medicine warm. Homes that rely on electric wells have no running water. Children are out of school. Workers can’t reach jobs. Paychecks vanish. The storm didn’t just take power. It took the rhythm of daily life.

Gary is a majority‑Black city, shaped by decades of labor, loss, and resilience. When a disaster hits a community like this, the impact lands on top of old wounds. It lands on top of systems weakened by years of disinvestment. And it lands on people who have spent generations building a life in a place that has not always been treated with care.

Gary, Indiana Residents Prepare NIPSCO Lawsuit

More than a week and a half after devastating storms swept through northwest Indiana, tens of thousands remain without power and are now being told by the local utility company to continue to wait.

That neglect shows up in the numbers. In 2024, NIPSCO asked regulators for a forty‑two‑dollar‑a‑month rate hike on top of bills people already struggled to afford. It took the Citizens Action Coalition pleading with the state commission to reject it, reminding them that affordability is supposed to be the law, not a suggestion. That fight happened long before this storm, but it shaped the conditions families are living through now. When a community is already stretched thin, a disaster doesn’t just break things. It breaks what was barely holding together.

And now, as people wait for the lights to return, NIPSCO insists that race has nothing to do with the slow response. But anyone who remembers New Orleans after Katrina knows how familiar this pattern feels. Entire neighborhoods in New Orleans were left without power, without investment, without restoration. Some of those neighborhoods have never been fully rebuilt. The people who lived there were told to be patient, to be resilient, to understand that recovery takes time. And then the help simply never came.

That history sits quietly behind what’s happening in Gary. It’s not that the storm was racist. It’s that the systems deciding who gets restored first, who gets investment, who gets attention, and who gets left waiting have long reflected the same inequalities that shape everyday life. When a company says race isn’t a factor, what they often mean is that they don’t see the long memory of communities who have lived through this before.

And in the middle of all this, US Steel sent disciplinary warnings to workers who couldn’t make it in. This is the mill that built Gary, the place where Black labor powered an industry that shaped the nation. People were dealing with crushed roofs, flooded basements, and cars trapped behind fallen trees. Instead of grace, they received letters. Instead of water or batteries or support, they received threats about attendance. It was a painful reminder of how quickly some institutions neglect the people who work for them.

A derecho is a weather event, but what’s happening in Gary is something deeper. It is a look at how fragile life becomes when the basic systems a community relies on fail all at once. It is a reminder that disasters do not hit every neighborhood with the same force, even when the winds blow in every direction. And it is a testament to the quiet strength of people who keep going, even when the lights stay off and the help is slow to arrive.

In moments like this, the story is not only about damage. It is about dignity. It is about the long memory of a city that has weathered more storms than anyone ever counted, including nearly 100 severe wind and hail events, multiple tornadoes, and devastating flooding in recent years.

Renewed Sense of Community

Resilient neighbors are standing together and helping each other get through the ordeal.

Gary will rebuild, as it always has. But the lesson of this storm is clear: communities deserve more than resilience. They deserve systems that hold steady when the wind rises. They deserve institutions that show compassion when people are hurting. And they deserve the kind of investment that keeps a disaster from becoming a crisis.