Hank Dorman and the rest of Utica’s residents are still without power six days after the wind storm that caused the biggest and longest blackout in Duke Energy Corp.’s history.

And the prospects for power to come back Saturday, as Duke previously said, are slim.

“We’re a mess up here,” Dorman said. “I haven’t seen a Duke truck in sight — I guess we’re sort of on the back burner. We’ve got about 600 people without power — they’re on edge.”

The town of Utica has taken it upon itself to clean up brush and trees, but residents and officials can’t fix the electricity, so they have to rely on Duke.

The Michael L. Becher Adult Corrections Complex work crew also is working to clear limbs in Utica.

According to Dorman, about 90 percent of Utica residents were still without power as of Friday afternoon, though Duke said that only a handful of residents there are without power.

Duke also said Friday that power will not be restored to everyone in its Clarksville District — which serves Clark and Floyd counties — until late Sunday or Monday. About 26,000 customers around the state are still without power, about 14,000 of those in the two counties as of Friday evening.

The Clarksville District had three times the number of individual cases — poles down or branches on wires — than in any of its other service areas in the state, said Angeline Protogere, a Duke spokeswoman.

“You may have a crew work an hour and only help a handful of people,” she said. “At this phase we’re tackling problems that bring on a smaller amount of customers. Power restoration in the final stretch is often more tedious because you’re working on a lot more individual problems.”

Statewide, there are 2,500 “cases” that need to be resolved to turn power back on to 26,000 customers — 1,600 of those cases are in the Clarksville District.

Protogere said that 1,100 of those cases only involve between one and five customers, 300 of the cases affect between six and 50, and 72 of those cases affect between 50 and 500 people.

“Power restoration is going to take longer than expected for some of our customers,” said Duke Energy Indiana President Jim Stanley. “Some of the North and South Carolina crews that we were fortunate to have assisting us are now moving to Ohio and Kentucky to help address the more than 130,000 outages we still have on our system there.

And in the past four days, 1,800 new cases have developed in the Clarksville District caused by fallen limbs that were weakened by Sunday’s winds. Though Duke is sending its North Carolina crews to Ohio and Kentucky, it is pulling other crews from around the state to come to Clark and Floyd counties.

Rumors of copper theft from downed lines as a cause for the delay in restoring power were denied by Duke. Protogere said that is an issue, but not particularly during the aftermath of the storm.

Harrison REMC, which serves parts of Floyd county, has about 4,700 customers without power, but has said some might be in the dark until Wednesday.

Clark County REMC has been able to more quickly reduce the number of outages since the storm. With 9,000 customers out of power Sunday, now only 1,000 remain to be fixed.

“I’ve been here 31 years and I don’t recall us ever having an outage this widespread,” said Denise Adams, with Clark REMC. “I’ve never seen this many outages for this long of a time period.”

Adams said Clark REMC is hoping to have restored all of its customers’ power by Sunday.

“Certainly customers are frustrated,” she said. “There are people that this is the straw that broke the camel’s back and for some it’s just an inconvenience.

“For a lot of people, their just enduring it and finding creative ways to spend time with their families.”