Work slow to restore power in Southern Indiana

EVANSVILLE – Utility crews found their work slow going Thursday as they spent a second day trying to restore power outages caused in southern Indiana by the icy punch of this week’s winter storm.

The nearly 90,000 homes and businesses that remained without electricity were concentrated in and around Evansville and the counties near Louisville, Ky.

Utility companies estimated it could be early next week before all outages are fixed.

The storm has been blamed for at least three deaths, including those of residents in Jackson and Daviess counties who suffered heart attacks while shoveling snow, the state Department of Homeland Security said. The other death was from a Crawford County traffic accident on Tuesday.

Utility companies had hundreds of extra workers come in from other states to help their crews restore power over the next few days, but it was difficult to fix lines that buckled under the three-quarters of an inch of ice.

“We have to spend one, two or three hours just removing trees before we can repair,” said Vectren spokeswoman Chase Kelley. “We have to do a lot of clearing of debris before we can begin the restoration process.”

Vectren had more than 55,000 outages in the Evansville area as of midday Thursday – down from Wednesday’s peak of 70,000 when about half of its customers there were without electricity. The utility expects to restore power to all its customers by early next week.

Duke Energy reported about 33,000 outages as of midday Thursday, mostly in Clark and Floyd counties near Louisville. That was about one-third of Duke’s total reported outages from the storm.