Think back to January 2019 in the Region. On Jan. 30 that year, the temperature at Gary's airport fell to minus 20, with a wind chill of minus 51, and Valparaiso's airport hit minus 19. In January 2026, wind chills across Northwest Indiana reached minus 30 to minus 40.

If the heat fails for a week at your plant, the cost lands on payroll, equipment and customer commitments. Five decisions you can make before the first cold night will shape that cost.

Decide who stays

Decide now whether an outage sends people home or keeps them on site, and for how long. Check any union contract first. State law only requires employers to pay for hours worked, the Indiana Department of Labor says.

Hourly workers you keep on site waiting for the heat are probably on the clock: the U.S. Department of Labor counts time spent “engaged to wait” as work, though it says the facts decide each case.

In 2025, the average weekly wage in private manufacturing was $2,040 in Lake County, $1,993 in Porter County and $1,304 in La Porte County. At Lake County's average, 50 workers kept on site through a dead week would cost $102,000 in wages alone.

Know what freezes first

At manufacturing sites insured by FM, a property insurer, freeze incidents from 2012 through 2021 caused an average gross loss of $1.3 million, in 2022 dollars, against $545,000 at the other sites it insures.

Start with the sprinklers. Any area with water-filled sprinkler piping and no other freeze protection must be kept at 40 degrees or warmer, the National Fire Protection Association told building owners in 2022. When it's below 20 degrees outside and the heat has been off for several hours, watch the coldest parts of the system closely. If frozen pipes knocked the system out for more than 10 hours out of 24, the association said in 2021, its standard called for further steps, such as evacuating the affected area or setting up an approved fire watch.

Then list what else can freeze. Condensation that freezes in instrument air tubing can block signals and force a process to stop. Water-filled coils in air-handling units can freeze and rupture even while the building stays warm. Stored materials count: Hempel, a coatings maker, says freezing can permanently damage its waterborne coatings.

Check your contracts

Missed deliveries can bring penalties and lost customers. Indiana's Uniform Commercial Code can excuse a late or missed delivery when an unpredictable event makes delivery as agreed impracticable. To rely on it, you must give buyers timely notice and share any reduced output fairly. The excuse doesn't apply if you agree to do more.

Read your contracts before winter, with counsel if needed. Decide now which orders can ship from finished goods in stock.

Get the heat ready

Put boilers and rooftop units on your plant's maintenance calendar before the season. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety‘s winter checklist says to schedule preventive maintenance and check that the system works properly.

Businesses should also plan for backup heat and power, Louis Gritzo, FM's chief science officer, wrote in 2024. FM's guidance allows temporary heaters for small areas or equipment, kept away from combustibles and watched by trained staff, among other conditions.

Plan for slow recovery

Build your freeze plan around three cases: the plant keeps running, sits idle or shuts down. Where applicable, assume at least three days without power or gas coming in, which usually means no heat.

Holiday breaks, with the heat turned down and staff gone, are a high-risk time for freezes, Gritzo wrote. After an areawide freeze, repair firms and some insurers face a flood of calls, so recovery can be slow, he noted. If you already have a service agreement, check what it says about response times. Either way, plan for your own people to watch the sprinklers and the plant's coldest corners while you wait.

Write those decisions down while the plant is still warm, and share them with the people who'll act on them.