In the southern part of Hammond this morning, including the Woodmar area, a power outage affecting about 32-hundred NIPSCO customers also impacted motorists along some busy thoroughfares. A tipster told us traffic lights were out along Columbia from River Drive to 169^th Street, and Indianapolis Boulevard from 175^th Street, which is right off the Borman Expressway (80/94) north to 171^st.

NIPSCO spokesman Nick Meyer says they first got calls around 8:15 am, and they've determined the issues were coming from their Woodmar Substation in the area of 175^th and Northcote. Meyer says a school was affected as well. A little before 10 am, Meyer says they were able to switch feeds and get power back up. It's not known yet what caused the outage itself.

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