Dunes Blog

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I was very impressed with the coverage on NWI.com of the recent flooding in the area. With no truly local TV station able to provide round the clock coverage, The Times stepped in and provided that coverage.

Their site was continually updated all throughout the recent crisis with the latest information. You could tell their writers were putting in overtime. They literally filled the site with content about the flooding, all the while continuing regular news coverage. It became a place to find out about the latest road and school closings. The kind of invaluable resource we need in this area.

One thing I and many others wanted to see was pictures. NWI.com became a central place where people could submit and view photos of the destruction in the area. It was fantastic. I literally went through hundreds of pictures and personal accounts.

NWI.com is truly becoming an online portal for Northwest Indiana. The design of their site is clean and efficient, it’s easy to navigate around and it loads quickly. Kudos goes out the the team managing the The Time web operations, they’re doing a fantastic job. I’ve managed content myself, but not on this scale, so I know the kind of work these guys do.

As someone who works doing SEO and Social Media, their site is doing a fantastic job taking advantage of these new technologies. The site has video, RSS Feeds, user comments (though I don’t recommend reading them, your I.Q. will go down) and ways to share content on other social networking sites.

I was surprised to see them stream the Gubernatorial debate live last night. This was an awesome thing to do since there really isn’t a way to air that stuff locally on TV (though I don’t know if the local PBS aired it, probably not).

NWI is undeserved by the major media networks because we are crammed between South Bend and Chicago and thus get the TV networks in both cities. Because of this, coverage on the Chicago and South Bend Networks about Northwest Indiana is sparse, to say the least. The Times is filling that void by using the internet to create a portal for NWI as well as it’s own de facto media network, as we’ve seen with them streaming live events.

Let’s hope they keep it up. I’d like to see a web based video network dedicated to NWI and maybe radio feeds or podcasts. I would also like to see them embrace blogs more and maybe create a directory/agrigator of local blogs.

Speaking of blogs. I was disappointed with NWI Bloggers during the flooding. This is probably the worst disaster to hit the area in a long time and many local blogs were silent (though a couple did blog). Keeping in mind that these blogs are run by people and they were probably dealing with the affects of the disaster. But Blogging provides a unique way to citizens to share their experiences and pictures. Granted, I didn’t write much about it myself because Valpo was spared the worst of the floods and I pretty much stayed in to avoid the chaos.

If you wrote about the floods, please send me links to your entries. I’d like to aggregate the links onto one page so that people can see what other people had to say about this terrible disaster.

We’ve been hit by some amazing rainstorms. The type of rainstorms you only get every hundred years. Everything has just been inundated with water. The last remnants of Hurricane Ike swept through the area today and left streets flooded, rivers overflowing. Overall making life in NWI miserable.

It proved impossible to get from Valpo to Highland and back today. What a mess. I’m suspired my little car was able to make it through some of the puddles that it did. 80/94 was closed, so it took twice as long as it needed to get home from Highland. We drove to Gary and Hobart and since they are low lying (former marshland), they were just saturated with water.

Thankfully, our property has remained relatively undamaged. No roof leaks for flooding. Though, there is some wetness in my basement office, but nothing that can’t be quickly cleaned up (perks of having a Carpet Cleaning Dad). We’re lucky compared to the other flooded houses we saw today while we were out and about.

The most amazing thing I saw was the new Lake Target. The Target parking lot in Merrillville is literally a giant lake, including rushing rapids. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a picture. Below are some other pictures I managed to take today.

Valpo was pretty lucky, it appears the majority of the flooding was in Lake County and the lower lying areas of Porter County. Valpo being on a hill helps out with flood control. Some streets were flooded and stuff, but things were not nearly as bad as they were elsewhere. Route 130 through Wheeler was a mess. The water on 130 is at least 5 or 6 feet deep. My car barely made it through. So glad they built Valpo as the top of a morraine.

The Flooding in front of the Bosak Dealerships in Merrillville.

My little Honda had to get through this to get to Highland!

More flooding on Route 30 between Merrillville and Schererville.

Old growth tree in Valpo that was felled in the storm.

Northwest Indiana was hit by some nasty storms on Tuesday night. At one point there was a tornado in Griffith, Indiana that did a ton of damage.

We were under a tornado warning for a while. Hearing the sirens so loud and clear was chilling. My wife and I took refuge in the basement with all the cats and listened and watched as the storm rolled in.

The lights went off a few times. The thunder and lightning was loud and amazing. It was also rather pleasant, sitting in the basement, in the back corner with my lovely wife with the cats nervous and playing around us. We were holed up for about an hour and I didn’t really care. It was nice.

Storms should come around more often.

Thankfully we didn’t get hit by a tornado but it was still exciting. Some people were not so lucky.

The storms were not over, however.

What followed was probably the worst storm I’d ever experienced in my life, and I grew up in Tornado Alley in Texas. It stormed all night. Literally ALL NIGHT. There was non-stop thunder and lightning. It was crazy. Every time I’d doze off to sleep, there’d be a huge crack of the lightning striking and it’d wake my wife and I up. The cats were freaked.

No one in my household got any sleep that night. It was awful. Lighting strike after lightning strike. Our street flooded under several feet of water.

Yesterday, I saw the aftermath on my way to and from work. Downed trees everywhere. Water extraction trucks every where. It was insane the amount of damage in Valparaiso and we didn’t even have the tornado!

The remnants of the local Jimmy’s John’s in Valparaiso.

Thankfully, we didn’t have any damage to our house or property. Some people weren’t so unfortunate. Our thoughts are with them.