Portage officials expressed their disappointment in Gov. Mike Braun and other statewide elected officials for their response in the wake of the Aug. 11 derecho that devastated the city and left some residents without power for weeks.
Their remarks came during a lovefest for Portage residents and others who rallied in support of the city.
“I have never felt more awkward than trying to be on the phone trying to get state officials to take our city’s situation seriously,” Mayor Austin Bonta said at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
“We are standing here tonight because of the unstoppable people of Portage,” said resident Jessica Szabo, who described herself as “usually a rabble rouser.”
Then she turned her remarks downstate. “The response from our state leadership was a failure,” she said.
Referring to Braun, she added, “He has yet to follow through on so many issues for the region.”
Antonio Gutierrez, of Portage, works for the secretary of state’s office. “I highly, highly disagree with the remarks made by the previous speaker,” he said.
“Northwest Indiana wasn’t the only place hit. Central Indiana was hit with devastating floods,” he noted.
Bonta said he wasn’t planning to say anything about his dealings with the state at the meeting, but Szabo got him started.
“To this day, I have received no actual call from the governor’s office about the state of this city,” Bonta said.
The state offered to send people from the Indiana Department of Correction the next day, but only if the city would pay for portable toilets for them, Bonta said. The city was still in crisis mode, so that didn’t happen. Bonta wasn’t even sure if the company to provide portable toilets could even get through the city streets blocked by fallen trees and power lines.
Then the state said maybe the Indiana Department of Transportation could pay for the portable toilets for the prisoners and their guards to show up, but they were only coming to cut open the roads that were still closed because of downed wires, Bonta said.
By the time the state help could arrive, 95% of the city’s roads were already open, he said.
“We moved on as a city,” Bonta said.
Multiple state officials, including Braun, went to Lake County, but never once showed up in Porter County, said Councilman Collin Czilli, D-5th.
“I’m not the only Porter County official who is completely confused and I might even say bamboozled,” Bonta said.
Czilli and others have been getting daily updates and helpful information about applying for federal aid from U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan’s office, he said, but nothing from either U.S. Sen. Todd Young or Sen. Jim Banks.
Bonta said he had been contacted by Banks’ team.
Councilman Bob Parnell, R-2nd, said there are no state or FEMA mobile offices yet in Portage. “I think that’s awful,” he said, requiring Portage residents to go to Lake County for assistance.
“We’ve given them all sorts of times and dates that we’re available,” Bonta said.
Bonta and others offered testimony about the storm’s impact.
“We thought it was going to be a stormy day,” Bonta said. “We watched the sky turn green, then black.”
After the storm passed, Police Chief Michael Candiano immediately called Bonta. “Mayor, the whole city has been destroyed,” Bonta recalls him as saying.
Candiano set the record straight. “I don’t think those were the exact words I used when I called the mayor. I believe I said, ‘Mayor, this city is (expletive).’”
Bonta was worried. “Maybe it was like that Designated Survivor show,” he said, with just Bonta and Candiano left to rebuild civilization.
City Hall quickly became a command center for the storm response. Even Redevelopment Director Dan Botich, who was at City Hall for a scheduled meeting, rolled up his sleeves and helped coordinate efforts, Bonta said. “Suddenly, everyone stopped having one job.”
“I lost count after 166 blocked roads,” he said. “It was something to think about how fast we were able to get it open.”
Candiano was teaching a class at a school when the storm hit and knew he had to make it back to the center of the city. “I felt maybe like my car was going to get picked up” with the high winds, he said. “We weren’t even sure we were going to get away from the school we were at.”
“We’ll probably be telling these stories for a while,” he said. “The fact that we didn’t have more injuries or fatalities is really amazing to me.”
“Every road was blocked. Every subdivision was blocked,” Candiano said. Citizens were cutting up holes so first responders could get to emergency scenes.
“It was nonstop,” he said. “At one point we ran into 150 calls in eight hours.”
“We were running so many calls so fast we were blowing through gas,” he said.
By 3 p.m., supervisors were saying cars were running on empty, and all the gas stations in the city were without power. There wasn’t time to drive to Michigan City for fuel. An assistant chief reached out to Portage Township Schools to allow access to their fuel pumps at Portage High School.
Police worked an additional 611 hours in storm-related service, he said. Most administrators worked 16-hour days for four days straight. Administrators don’t get overtime pay.
Bonta’s chief of staff, Lee Ann Van Curen, called so often seeking traffic support and other assistance with the city’s storm response that Candiano quipped, “I was going to block her phone.”
“It was a wild experience,” Candiano said.
The fire department was similarly busy.
“The number of calls handled by the fire department was unprecedented,” Fire Chief Chris Crail said. One crew handled 213 calls for service, including the house explosion that claimed the life of Leona Rice, as well as numerous structural collapses.
Normally, the fire department responds to 400 to 500 calls for service per month. In August, it was more than 1,100.
The assistant chief for EMS went to a number of houses to distribute oxygen to people who needed it, Crail said.
“It shows what we are truly able to accomplish,” he said.
“This is the most severe storm and widespread devastation that I have ever encountered,” he said.
Clerk-Treasurer Liz Modesto agreed it was the worst storm in her lifetime. She thanked the Chesterton Town Council for donating water as well as others who helped out.
Portage employees and officials pitched in, going to extraordinary lengths to help out. “I saw one of the councilmen out there with a chainsaw,” which she was very shocked by, Modesto said.
Councilman Ferdinand Alvarez, D-At-large, said he is more grateful to the fire department than ever for helping a close family member who found herself “in perhaps the worst spot in the city” during the storm – under the one-lane Samuelson bridge. Firefighters had to clear a path for her to get out.
Czilli helped Candiano distribute cases of water to people. They saw countless people who didn’t even live in Portage coming to help out. “It was really a whole region effort of people coming together to just help,” Czilli said.
Parnell said four families on his block couldn’t afford a generator, so others helped out. “We ran extension cords across the street so our neighbors could plug their refrigerators in and have a little light.”
Scripture says, “Help thy neighbor as yourself,” Parnell, a Baptist minister, noted.
“It’s been a horrible experience, but it’s also been enlightening” to see the bonds created, said Councilwoman Gina Giese-Hurst, D-1st.
Councilwoman Penny Ambler, R-4th, said she hopes the camaraderie and relationships built during the storm response continue.
Council President Victoria Vasquez, R-3rd, pointed out that not only was there structural damage and lengthy power outages but also great loss. She asked for a moment of silence for the Rice family grieving following the house explosion.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.