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Tree destroyed: A large, old tree on Third St. near Porter Ave., was completely torn apart by the winds Tuesday. All that is left is the shattered stump, shown here. (Tribune photo by Margaret L. Willis)

Tree damage at 4th St.: Damage from yesterday’s sudden severe wind and rain storm included this tree split apart on 4th St. in Chesterton. Street Department crews were removing limbs blocking roadways immediately after the storm passed.

(Photo provided by John Canright)

Trail of damage: A microburst of high winds hit in Chestnut Hills during Tuesday’s sudden storm, leaving a twisting trail of damage. The winds apparently first struck this tree down on Partridge Way, narrowly missing the car parked nearby. Then, winds charged through the subdivision breaking more trees, knocking down fences and scattering children’s toys, patio furniture and tree branches. This fence at 1700 Greenmeadow Lane, as well as a neighbor’s fence were torn up by wind.  The homeowner watched as the patio chairs were lifted into the air and set back down again. (Tribune photos by Margaret L. Willis)

Tree uprooted: High winds hit the Duneland area on Tuesday afternoon. Many trees where broken, brought down or uprooted. An old pin oak was uprooted and fell on the home of Nina Babcock, at 1171 N. 150 E.. She was not home at the time of the storm, for which she was grateful. (Tribune photo by Dana Gilbertson)

Smoldering tree: A tree damaged during Tuesday’s storm caught on fire this morning, after falling into an electrical line. Chesterton Fire Department responded to the scene at 8:45 a.m. Smoke can be seen rising from the burning tree trunk damaged during yesterday’s sudden wind and rain storm. (Tribune photo by Carol Anderson)

15th St. was closed overnight after tree branches, broken by wind, got tangled up in the power lines. Crews were on the scene today to try and disentangle wires and restore power. (Tribune photo by Kevin Nevers)

By KEVIN NEVERS

Duneland and Porter County were digging out this morning from a storm on Tuesday afternoon which left one person dead, tens of thousands without power, and an unknown number of homeowners with structural damage.

According to the National Weather Service (NWS), at 3:12 p.m. a wind gust of 70 miles per hour was recorded in the area of C.R. 1100N and Ind. 49, accompanied by pea-sized hail.

Two minutes later, at 3:14 p.m., a tree fell on the passenger compartment of a pickup truck on Ind. 149 near C.R. 875N, killing the driver instantly. As of deadline today, the Porter County Coroner’s Office had not released the victim’s name but he is believed to be a 71-year-old Gary resident, the Porter County Sheriff’s Police said.

This morning the Chesterton Tribune had received an anecdotal report of what appeared to a tree-trimming crew at C.R. 1050N and Babcock Road to be a tornado, or at least rotation in the sky, while David James, assistant superintendent of the Porter County Highway Department, said that twisted trees in east Porter County, in portions of Westchester, Jackson, and Pine townships, suggested tornadic activity.

Two NWS investigators were being dispatched today to Lake County to review reports of possible tornados, NWS spokesman Charles Ott said.

Porter County’s integrated tornado siren system was never activated, however, because the NWS never issued a tornado warning, Emergency Management Agency Director Phil Griffith said. Griffith has the capability of activating the system himself from his office or car or of sending an activation order to the 911 Dispatch Center. “But we were never actually under a tornado warning. We were under a severe thunderstorm warning. And for a severe thunderstorm we’re not going to do it.”

Griffith added that he has 140 trained spotters on the ground throughout the field and that they remain in constant HAM radio contact with the NWS and his office. In any case, Griffith said, his impression is that Tuesday’s damage was caused by straight-line winds, not tornados.

In Chesterton eight to 10 trees on public rights-of-way were downed by the wind, Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg said, and numerous other trees had fallen from private property onto roadways. At mid-morning one tree remained where it had fallen across 15th Street, between Morgan Ave. and Lincoln Ave., forcing the closure of that roadway. Schnadenberg said that it was tangled in power lines and a Northern Indiana Public Service Co. crew had not yet responded to the scene.

A drive through Chesterton late Tuesday afternoon revealed numerous other instances of storm damage. In the area of C.R. 1100N and 11th Street a large limb fell onto the roof of a home. On C.R. 1100N near C.R. 100E an enormous tree was simply uprooted and left keeled over, its root ball having peeled away the grass around it like a piece of carpeting. Northeast of Valparaiso, the NWS said, a tree with a diameter of two and a half feet was snapped at its base.

Schnadenberg, comparing Tuesday’s storm to the ice storm earlier this winter, noted that few trees actually fell in February, mostly just limbs. “Now we’re talking whole large trees,” he said.

In Portage, the storm ripped a metal shed off its concrete foundation at the Edmonds & Evans Portage Chapel, said North County Commissioner John Evans, owner of the funeral home. The shed was twisted around and then “tossed out into the field,” he said.

NIPSCO

Through midnight the Porter County Highway Department had received 31 call-outs for downed trees, James said. In the case of trees tangled in power lines one crew was forced to babysit a scene for five hours while waiting for a NIPSCO crew to arrive. In another case, though, a NIPSCO crew arrived fairly quickly after a tree uprooted a high-pressure gas line.

NIPSCO spokesman Jim Fitzer, asked about the delay in getting crews dispatched to line damage, said that in the aftermath of a storm as severe as this one the focus is typically on the circuits running from substations. “I understand the frustration of folks, but we really have to focus on bringing up circuits that can each serve a thousand customers.”

Immediately after the storm, Fitzer said, NIPSCO retained the services of 70 contract crews and a fresh set of crews was cycled into the effort at 6 a.m.

As of 8 a.m. 16,000 NIPSCO customers remained without power, down from 56,000 at the peak of the storm. NIPSCO said that the hardest hit areas include Chesterton, Valparaiso, Portage, LaPorte, Gary, and Hammond.

Fitzer did urge customers still without power to check the weatherhead, the pipe where the line actually enters their homes, to ensure that it’s not damaged. If the weatherhead is damaged, a licensed electrical contractor must first be hired to repair it before NIPSCO will be able to restore power.

Classes at both Liberty Intermediate and Elementary schools were canceled today for lack of power. Meanwhile, 18 of Chesterton’s 32 lift stations lost power, forcing a crew into the field with a portable lift station and generator, pumping one down, then jumping to the next and pumping it down, Utility Superintendent Steve Yagelski said. This morning only the Crocker lift station remained juiceless. “No backups were reported. We haven’t heard of anybody’s having a problem. Of course it was dark. So who knows what we’ll find out today.”

Yagelski said that fully 0.3 inches of rain were recorded in five minutes at the wastewater treatment plant, “a pretty significant amount.”

The Schools

As it happens, the storm struck just as most of the Duneland School Corporation was releasing students, Director of Transportation Jim Bonfield said. Happily all kindergarten and elementary school students, whose bus routes run first, beginning around 2:25 p.m., had already been safely delivered to their homes.

But the intermediate, middle, and high school buses were beginning to load students when all hell broke loose, Bonfield said. In most cases those students were immediately evacuated back into their school buildings and a few buses already rolling similarly evacuated their students to the nearest school. “I think that the Duneland School bus drivers did an absolutely fantastic job safeguarding the kids.”

In six cases, however, the drivers of buses carrying special education or middle school students had to improvise, with the help of some marvelously gracious Dunelanders. One bus evacuated every one of its at least 30 kids into a private residence on C.R. 50W, another into a residence on North Calumet Road, still another into the home of one of the bussed students on 11th Street.

A fourth bus evacuated its students, “ironically,” Bonfield said, into the home of former Duneland Director of Transportation Lynn Underwood on C.R. 850N. Two others evacuated students into the Porter town hall.

Bonfield noted that the Duneland School Corporation had no more than 10 minutes warning prior to the arrival of the storm around 3 p.m., and that when the buses began to roll from the barn at 2 p.m. no one yet had an inkling of what was coming down the pike.

CPD and CFD

There was one extraordinarily close call in Chesterton, when a motorist westbound on Porter Ave., just east of South Calumet Road, was unable to react quickly enough when a tree, hit by lightning, split in two and half of it fell across the roadway and into her path. Chesterton Police said that her vehicle drove up onto the tree, leaving her front tires in the air, and that a tow truck had to be dispatched to the scene to remove it.

The Chesterton Fire Department was also kept busy by the storm, responding in one case to the home of a resident in need of oxygen after a power outage rendered his equipment unusable. EMS personnel from Porter hospital provided the resident with bottled oxygen, the CFD said.

Cleaning Up

It will take the Street Department at least until Friday to remove all trees from public rights-of-way, Schnadenberg said. On Monday, however, crews should begin collecting debris from the roadside for chipping.

But Schnadenberg reminded residents who hire private tree-trimmers that it is the tree-trimmer’s responsibility to remove all debris and dispose of it properly. The Street Department simply doesn’t have the resources to collect a private contractor’s leavings, he said.

Posted 5/16/2007