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Notes -
By yesterday the number of remaining customers without power was down to 863 from the peak of 374,500; when I check today it's at 113.
Two weeks of major outages (including a full week for the majority of Gary) is pretty awful, and some population factors did contribute a little to that, but I think the main culprit was clearly the "at least three (3) confirmed tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, extreme straight-line winds, and flooding". When "Straight-linewind speeds reached up to ninety-nine (99) miles per hour near Gary, Indiana", that was effectively the peak wind force of a Category 2 Hurricane.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last instance I can find of a Cat 2 hurricane making landfall in a majority-white area (super-majority white, as it happened) was the (ironically named in this context?) Hurricane Juan. In addition to the 8 dead and $200M of damage, Wiki recalls that "Nova Scotia power reported that they had restored power to the last of their affected customers by October 12, 2 weeks after the storm had passed."
The March 2024 tornado outbreak is probably more illustrative as a comparison. It did recover faster than Gary Indiana, and given the 'worked delayed by gunshots' bit, there's a pretty plausible partial casual contributor (though not one with a counterargument given Kentucky), but it's not quite the vast gap you'd expect from the news reports.
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