The Cookie Jar Pastry Shop in Cape Elizabeth will miss its busiest season of the year because substantial water damage to its building won’t be repaired until January.

Heavy winds and strong rains that struck Maine the weekend before Halloween, and on Saturday, Oct. 28, blew the roof off the Cookie Jar, letting water pour into the store.

“It turned into a bigger disaster than anyone knows,” Donna Piscopo, who has owned the pastry shop on Shore Road with her husband Tom for more than 30 years, said Monday.

What looked at first like a serious mopping endeavor turned into a building disaster. Piscopo said they lost just about everything. The ceiling, cabinets, walls, flooring, coolers, cash registers, bread slicers and display cases were all damaged beyond repair by water and mold.

Piscopo said she and her husband had hoped to reopen by Thanksgiving. But after assessing the damage, they now think early January might be a more reasonable estimate, even if the roof is soon repaired.

“Someone told us we had our own private Katrina, which is pretty much true,” said Piscopo.

Clement Dodd, 43, of South Portland, normally is a baker at the Cookie Jar, but Monday morning, he was busying washing pans in the shop’s sink. Surrounding Dodd was a gutted pastry shop: walls, ceiling and floors stripped. The equipment was gone and wires were strewn about the establishment. A few halogen construction lamps provided small patches of light.

“I’ve been playing a lot of golf and working around the house,” said Dodd of his unexpected vacation.

The insurance company has been good so far, said Piscopo, and is paying key employees for eight weeks. But the store is losing out on its key money-making holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“They are our ultimate holidays,” said Piscopo.

Piscopo first learned of the problem when baker Mike Lehman called her early Oct. 28 to report a piece of the roof blew off. “It wasn’t a piece,” said Piscopo, Nov.13, “it was the whole thing.”

Lehman, 38, said Tuesday that he was in the shop when heard a couple of big bangs and then saw part of the roof fly off. He said water started pouring in, and within 10 minutes, insulation started falling and the sky was visible.

“At that point I knew it was bad,” he said. Within an hour, said Lehman, who has worked at the pastry shop for 15 years, it was a total mess. Lehman said since the incident, he has been helping clean out the shop and has been working on a lot of house projects.

Piscopo said when her family arrived at the store that morning, the power was still on and tiles were coming down from the ceiling. The acoustic ceiling tiles would fill up with water, and then come crashing down “like little explosions,” said Piscopo.

The Piscopos live on Spear Avenue in South Portland with their sons Nicholas, 10, and Thomas, 12. Joy Piscopo said that one good thing has come from the disaster: Her husband will be home throughout the Christmas season, instead of working long hours at the pastry shop.

Clement Dodd, a baker for the Cookie Jar Pastry Shop, washes dishes on Monday amongst disrepair. The inside of the Cookie Jar looking out onto Shore Road on Monday morning, Nov. 13.