This is an EDITORIAL from The Times Community Editorial Advisory Board
As it appeared in The Times of NW Indiana Friday August 21, 2026
I thought that this editorial was timely and I bet shares the views of many of us in the Region. I felt that it deserved sharing on my blog post so as many residents as possible could read it during these most difficult times. It is certainly worth a read…
Power, grace and action.
These are three of the most important needs in Northwest Indiana as our Region recovers from last week’s devastating storms.
Power, or more specifically electricity, remains the most urgent need for tens of thousands of Region residents more than a week after a derecho wreaked havoc on so many of our communities.
NIPSCO must urgently heed the calls from public officials and its customers, who understandably are growing more impatient with every passing day of non-functioning lights, refrigerators and air conditioners.
This is a massive job for our Region’s power company, with the 300,000-plus outages that immediately followed the storms marking the most in NIPSCO’s history.
It’s good to see NIPSCO trucks moving in waves through our communities, and it’s also encouraging that the company is working with ComEd to bring in reinforcements.
But that’s still not enough for anyone in the Region still living in homes without power.
NIPSCO has made well-documented cases for customer rate increases in recent years to fund better, more robust infrastructure. When the dust settles on the urgent operations currently underway, the unprecedented damage from the recent storms should bring a thorough accounting and assessment from NIPSCO.
Community trust in the company that powers our cities and towns depends on it.
Community trust also demands that every city, town and county official make similar assessments of disaster relief plans and strategies. What have we learned from the derecho’s aftermath? How can this knowledge help us in the future? Is there a way for a more centralized and cooperative approach among our municipalities and counties?
Grace also is needed — for the lineman working to restore our power, students and teachers who keep seeing delays in the scheduling of the first days of school and each and every one of us as we try to resume our daily lives in the wake of historic destruction and hardship.
We must give grace to ourselves and our neighbors.
And we also should be grateful for so many examples of solid, selfless action within the past several days.
From food giveaways courtesy of Strack & Van Til to cookouts sponsored by churches and other community leaders, our Region has shown its neighborly mettle in the massive storm’s aftermath.
Strack & Van Til reports it has given out 78,704 meals, 385 pallets of water and 254 pallets of ice throughout this period of need.
Everywhere we look, we see neighbors helping neighbors removing trees from rooftops, cleaning up and offering spare food and supplies.
We’re seeing the best examples of human decency in the actions of residents in every community.
Thanks to anyone who has demonstrated the one thing that truly makes Northwest Indiana special — its people.
This editorial is a collaboration of The Times Community Editorial Advisory Board. Our members are Tom Schager, publisher, The Times Media Co.; Marc Chase, executive editor, The Times of Northwest Indiana; SuElen Rivera, managing editor, The Times of Northwest Indiana; Lisa Daugherty, president and CEO, The Center of Workforce Innovations; Chris White, CEO, United Way Northwest Indiana; Chuck Hughes, president, Gary Chamber of Commerce; Jeff Strack, president and CEO, Strack & Van Til; Bill Hanna, executive director, Dean and Barbara White Family Foundation; Nicky All Jackson, executive director, Center for Justice and Exoneration Network.
From Rick Bella: I could not agree more with this editorial. We WILL recover from this and I agree that important lessons need to be learned after this experience. We have all noticed leaning electrical poles, sloppy wire hanging, and trees growing into wires all across our region. I believe that it all finally caught up to us. I also believe that we need a better system to keep traffic signals working in busy major intersections. Small intersections are a little easier to navigate as drivers treat them as a 4-way stop. But multiple intersections two lanes wide with added turning lanes can become extremely confusing with already stressed drivers. Yesterday a terrible accident happened at the intersection of 93rd Ave and Broadway (a State Controlled Road & Signal), as drivers didn’t manage well in with the traffic signals out of operation. We need to do better. We need to be more serious. We need to stop just ‘getting by’.
Merrillville has a comprehensive disaster plan. It has served us very well starting on June 11 with our first round of violent weather and now in our August 11th round. We have followed it to the letter and everyone knows their roles. I can’t thank enough out own town staff and leadership working together to get Merrillville recovered as soon as possible. Is it perfect? No, but we’ll certainly make adjustments to improve the plan now that we fear the worse: that our Region may become the ‘new’ tornado alley! Let’s get ready, let’s be ready, and let’s continue working together. I wish you all power very soon if you are still without it. Be safe, have grace.
-Rick Bella, Town Council President – Ward 5 Representative