A tree blocks Loon Drive in Topsham Friday morning after heavy winds caused widespread power outages in the Midcoast. Darcie Moore / The Times Record
BRUNSWICK — A few days after a Halloween storm knocked out power to 180,000 Central Maine Power customers throughout the state, the lights are back on for most.
In Sagadahoc County, only 65 customers were still without power early this morning, according to CMP’s website, including 51 in Georgetown. In Cumberland County, just 18 customers were without power four days after the storm.
Central Maine Power reported the utility had more than 80,000 outages across its service area as of midday Friday, the day after the storm brought winds and heavy rains.
Before the storm hit late Thursday, CMP had nearly 125 contractor crews on hand to work with the company’s 97 employee line crews during the initial response. About 60 crews joined the restoration effort from Canada. The company said 43 new crews arrived in Maine Friday night and Saturday morning and worked along 225 CMP and contractor crews.
“Unlike the recent Nor’easter which was primarily a coastal event, this wind has caused outages across the CMP service territory,” said Kevin Elwell, director of Electric Distribution for CMP, on Friday. “We had prepositioned crews appropriately to be able to address the need for road clearing before dawn.”
As of 2 p.m. Friday, Brunswick still had 3,463 CMP customers without power and nearly one-third of customers in Sagadahoc County were without power.
Sagadahoc County still had 2,300 outages late Saturday morning and only 212 customers were without power in Brunswick, according to the CMP website. Harpswell also still had 631 customers without power. By Sunday morning, only 262 Sagadahoc customers were without power Sunday morning, mostly in Georgetown.
Brunswick Fire Chief Ken Brillant said Friday the overall damage wasn’t as bad as a storm that caused widespread outages earlier this month. The major damage was caused by a tree that fell and pulled down wires on Bath Road near the Bowdoin Pines. That knocked out power to west Maine Street, Brillant said, and closed Bath Road, a thoroughfare in town.
According to the Sagadahoc County Emergency Management Agency, several downed utility poles and lines on Nequasset Road in Woolwich caused power outages in Woolwich, Arrowsic and Georgetown
There were 51 out of 1,714 Woolwich customers without electricity Sunday morning.
Woolwich Fire Chief Mike Demers said early Friday afternoon that Nequasset Road was impassable just north of the school. That could have caused delays for first responders heading to the northern part of town, Demers said. The road was open again by Friday night.
Three utility poles were knocked down on Nequasset Road in Woolwich by high winds that hit the Midcoast late Thursday night and Friday. Courtesy of Woolwich Fire Department
The Woolwich fire station opened as a warming station Saturday morning so people could get water, shower and charge their phones.
Woolwich and the surrounding towns have seen widespread outages when high winds hit. A powerful Nor’easter knocked out power to about 180,000 of CMP’s 646,000 customers on Oct. 17. It took several days before power was restored to all customers.
Nearly all Woolwich customers were without electricity after that storm, and it appeared that all Georgetown and Phippsburg customers were in the dark. Woolwich Central School was closed for two days.
Woolwich and the Midcoast area, in general, are very susceptible to damage from strong winds, “mostly because of their proximity to the water,” said meteorologist Chris Legro of the U.S. National Weather Service in Gray. “There’s less friction over the water so those winds travel and don’t slow down until they hit land so those first communities on land really get the brunt of it.”
The degree of damage is largely dependent on the direction of the wind, Legro said. Most often wind travels west or northeast and the trees grow accustomed to this. The coastline, north of Casco Bay, starts to bend to the east, which exposes communities to a southern wind. Thursday’s storm, which originated in the Ohio Valley and traveled through the eastern Great Lakes, carried gusts south and southwest.
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