RAYMOND — A wooded cluster of summer cottages in Edy Cove buzzed with the sound of chain saws Monday morning as a group of neighbors picked up pine branches that Tropical Storm Irene had left strewn about their lawns.

Sunday’s storm knocked down nearly a dozen trees in yards along the shore of Sebago Lake’s Jordan Bay, where boats washed up and docks ripped free.

Although most of the state escaped severe damage from the storm, some areas of the Lakes Region weren’t so lucky.

Despite the wreckage, homeowners in Edy Cove were cheery Monday as the sun shone and they started their cleanup – an effort they expected to take several days.

No one was injured, they said; it could have been worse.

“Nothing catastrophic. It’s just a mess,” said Peter Hoffman, who watched from a window Sunday as fierce winds forced his motorboat up onto the beach in front of his home.

Two houses away, a tree had fallen on the porch of Ron and Jane Stephens’ cottage. The Stephenses, who live in Yarmouth most of the year, were at a hurricane party Sunday afternoon in Falmouth when they got a call about the tree from a neighbor on Sebago Lake.

They decided to stay where they were.

“What are you going to do?” Ron Stephens said Monday, about a half-hour after he arrived at his summer home.

On the other side of Sebago Lake, Matthew Fletcher sipped on a bottle of Samuel Adams Octoberfest as he sat in a folding chair facing his trailer. A pine tree had crashed through the roof and landed in the kitchen Sunday afternoon while he and his fiancee, Crystal Remedis, sat in his truck at nearby Nason’s Beach.

“If you don’t find the humor in it …” Fletcher said, his voice trailing off.

Looking around at the branches and debris that covered the campground, he said, “We’ve got plenty of marshmallow sticks and firewood.”

The couple, who live in Canton, Mass., spend most summer weekends at the Nason’s Beach campground off Route 114 in Sebago. Fletcher proposed to Remedis in the trailer in July, around the time they found out she was pregnant.

“We had a really good summer until now,” Remedis said.

A few miles away, two trees lay across Anderson Road in Sebago, blocking in the residents who live between them until Monday afternoon.

One of the residents, Newton Pierce, said he watched from his lakeside cottage Sunday as trees tipped over onto his neighbors’ roofs. He said a boat owned by his son-in-law, who has a summer home next door, broke away from its mooring and landed on rocks in front of a house down the road. “I turned around and it was gone,” Pierce said.

About the same time Sunday, near Little Sebago Lake, Cumberland County Sheriff’s Deputy Dan Down was inspecting downed trees and wires on Aquila Road in Gray.

When he got back into his cruiser and put it in reverse, he stopped at the sound of something cracking.

“The next I knew, a big pine tree came down in front of my cruiser,” he said. The tree then took down a utility pole that landed just a few feet behind the cruiser. Down and the vehicle got out unscathed.

“Not a scratch on the car,” he said.

 

Staff Writer David Hench contributed to this report.

 

Staff Writer Leslie Bridgers can be contacted at 791-6364 or at: lbridgers@mainetoday.com