r/TikTokCringe • u/Girl-Understood • Aug 22 '26

Discussion This mother has gone viral vlogging her experience during the ongoing Gary, Indiana Blackout, people angered by the GoFundMe support she's attracted decided to report it and doxxed her.

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u/FrequentEffort7194 Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26

For those curious, on August 11th there were major thunderstorms in the NW Indiana region and as a result the ENTIRE area lost power (myself included). At its height, it was about 374,500 *customers. As of today, 33,340 *customers still do NOT have power. The latest ETA is Tuesday, but we were originally given no restoration estimates and these estimates have been constantly changing.

It has been very bleak here - most gas stations ran out of fuel (for generators) or didn’t have electricity to work the pumps. You’d wait in line for a half hour to find out someone had gotten the last of the gas. There’s been fights - tempers are running high with no A/C (among everything else). Some of us have wells and have no access to water without electricity (me). I had to drive 30 min+ to get to a town that had electricity and gas (in Illinois).

Thankfully, my power got restored, but my heart goes out to this woman and everyone else that experiences situations like this. While there have been fights, there have been plenty of neighbors coming together and helping clean up debris or chop up wood from downed trees.

Always look for the helpers.

Edit: Changed people to *customers (of NIPSCO - the company that supplies our electric)

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u/Huge-Effort-4367 Aug 22 '26

Don't forget that the next day another line of severe thunderstorms came through and knocked down a ton of broken branches. Recovery work had to be suspended for a couple hours.

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u/FrequentEffort7194 Aug 22 '26

Yes, you’re right. Back to back storms on Tuesday and Wednesday. We have been pummeled all spring/summer with severe weather. I fear this is the new normal :(

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u/Huge-Effort-4367 Aug 22 '26

It's been unbelievable!

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u/mechanical_stars Aug 22 '26

Is that really the amount of people affected or is it the amount of customers? For example, a house would be a customer but could have 5 people in it

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u/FrequentEffort7194 Aug 22 '26

You’re correct. I’ll edit my comment.

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u/CouldntBAPoint2184 Aug 23 '26

What. The. FUCK.

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u/spekt50 Aug 23 '26

After some reading, it seems its well beyond repairing the damage. They pretty much need to completely rebuild the grid.

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u/aiolisunsets Aug 23 '26

It ended up being a derecho, an inland hurricane. The bulk of it hit Portage, IN, which is the city next to Gary.

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u/Bolmac Aug 23 '26

It's encouraging that they've restored power for more than 90% of the customers that originally had outages. 33,340 is still a lot of people without power, but if they've made that much progress they're obviously working on it.

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u/ffffllllpppp Aug 23 '26

That all sounds terrible and I’m glad you have it back.

But also sorry if I am blunt but 30min drive to get gas etc just doesn’t seem very bad? (People who have no cars the situation must be extremely bad for sure). I mean I know people who live further than 30 mins from much of anything. I am sure my comment will sound insensitive but that’s not my goal, I am legitly curious.

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u/Horror_Video_8263 Aug 23 '26

They didn’t have enough gas when a larger portion of both IL and IN were without power (some restored after over a week), they were selling out due to everyone using it for generators. 

Also the state continued to be hit by flash flooding & neighborhoods on the north east and Indy (central IN) were flooded. Roads washed out. 

We don’t have the funding required for people in need with flooding and tree damage (many without flood insurance bc the areas do not typically flood). 

They told ppl to sign up for 5k of aid from the state, but the budget wouldn’t cover very many with the Derecho damage before the flood & 5k isn’t helping shit if your house was underwater a week ago & power took a very long time to restore in parts of the northern half of the state. 

These cities are spread out far and the damage is astounding. Gary IN apparently has 8 data centers that do have power back. 

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u/ffffllllpppp Aug 23 '26

Thanks for the details. It’s pretty awful. Isn’t FEMA funds supposed to cover floods?

I don’t doubt it is terrible. I was specifically wondering about the « had to drive 30+mins » which I thought might have been a typo.

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u/Horror_Video_8263 Aug 23 '26

There was a FEMA report and I’m not in the area so not sure, but I saw people saying that it wasn’t enough and there hasn’t been anything new for a week. Like I said, I’m not the most up to date on that bc I don’t live there. I do think I would’ve heard more about it tho if there was actual support. 

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u/NamesAreAnn0ying Aug 23 '26

lol I thought the same thing. Like you could walk that if you really needed to. 30-40 minute drive is nothing and if it meant I got to leave my house and get out of the town that has no power for a little bit, so be it.