By Scott DiSavino
NEW YORK, Aug 12 (Reuters) – Over 729,000 homes and businesses were without power on Wednesday as severe storms battered the U.S. Midwest, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
“Rounds of severe thunderstorms will threaten the Plains, Midwest and East into Thursday with damaging wind gusts, while repeated downpours could trigger dangerous flash flooding,” meteorologists at weather forecaster AccuWeather said in a release.
The hardest-hit state was Indiana with around 297,000 outages, representing about 9% of the state’s roughly 3.3 million customers, according to PowerOutage.us data.
The hardest-hit utility in Indiana was Northern Indiana Public Service Co (NIPSCO) with around 273,900 homes and businesses without service, representing about 59% of its roughly 468,000 customers in the state. NIPSCO is a unit of Indiana energy firm NiSource.
NIPSCO said in a release that it is “assessing damage at this time and will provide estimated restoration times when complete. There is widespread damage to electric infrastructure, including downed poles, power lines, and trees.”
“Due to the extent of the damage and the large geographic area affected, customers should expect restoration efforts to extend over multiple days in some areas,” NIPSCO said.
Other energy firms with numerous power outages include units of Exelon, Duke Energy and American Electric Power Co.
Here are the major outages by state:
State Outages
Indiana 297,300
Ohio 200,900
Illinois 147,000
Kentucky 62,900
West Virginia 21,500
Total Out 729,600
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )
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