(La Porte County, IN) - A La Porte County dairy farm was still running on a generator the day after a Monday afternoon storm brought down five nearby NIPSCO electrical transmission line towers.

 

All of the towers fell on land the Minich Dairy Farm uses to mostly raise corn, along with soybeans, wheat, and alfalfa between Kingsbury and Union Mills.

 

Frank Minich said the power went out at his family’s dairy farm just as the generator was being hooked up to milk the cows and restore electrical service to the entire 700 to 800-head operation. While traveling on a tractor a short distance to hook up the generator at his home, Minich had to drive around a number of fallen trees to get there and caught his first glimpse of the fallen electrical towers.

 

“There’s five of them kind of bent on the ground and just lying in the fields. Kind of crazy,” he said.

 

Minich said the heavy rain and strong winds moved in rapidly and lasted for just a few minutes.

 

“I didn’t realize it was going to be that bad,” he said.

 

Westville area farmer Mark Parkman was caught in the storm while planting the final acre of corn he has in one of his fields along Holmesville Road. He remarked how the winds were strong enough to blow the falling sheets of rain sideways. After leaving the 240-acre field, Parkman said he was driving home in his tractor pulling the planter when he encountered a nearby lightning strike he described as scary on County Road 900 West.

 

“It shook the whole tractor. It was closer than I care for,” he said.

 

Mike Kellems of LaPorte was on his way home from Westville but didn’t notice much storm damage until he was close to where the electrical towers fell in the area of 500 West and 400 South.

 

“A lot of trees down. A lot of power lines down. Utility poles down,” he said.

 

Kellems explained how farmers were in their fields while he was driving out to Westville a few hours before the storm hit.  While returning, though, “there were a couple of fields that looked like lakes and that was a 15 to 20 minute rain, if that."

 

Parkman noted how the heavy rain certainly didn’t help efforts to catch up on his already-late spring planting, noting how just 60 percent of his corn and 45 percent of his soybeans are in the ground when, normally, he would have already finished the process. He added that the spring has been wet enough for him to plant in soil that’s probably too wet in spots to try and catch up.

 

“We don’t have much choice. The rains just keep coming,” he said.

 

Parkman said some of his corn and soybeans are beginning to emerge from the soil, but he’s far behind enough to where yield losses could occur in the fall unless Mother Nature is more cooperative during the growing season.

 

“You just never know. Every year is a gamble,” he said.

 

The towers fell on a stretch of land the Minichs use to mostly plant corn. Minich expects some of the crop will be damaged due to NIPSCO crews going out there to put up new towers, but he doesn’t mind.

 

“At least nobody got hurt,” he said.

 

There were no confirmed reports of any tornadoes in that area but the amount of damage, especially to the towers, has people speculating.

 

“It had to take an awfully powerful wind shear or a straight line wind to knock those towers down. They actually crumbled to the ground,” said Kellems, who retired a few years ago from the LaPorte County Sheriff’s Office. Currently, he’s a police officer for Purdue University Northwest.