Tina Hewett-Gordon doesn’t know how the two trees missed the Nonantum Resort. 

The trees, which she estimated were 100 feet tall, fell like dominoes during the high winds that ripped through Kennebunkport on Thursday morning, she said. One fell, taking the other down with it and pulling a power line from the side of the building. 

But the resort, which doesn’t open for another month, is undamaged. The building never lost power, despite the downed line, and nobody was hurt. 

“It’s like there’s some kind of a demigod watching down on us,” said Hewett-Gordon, the longtime general manager of the Nonantum. 

“We’ll have lots of firewood for fire nights,” she said. 

Kennebunk and the surrounding area were particularly hard-hit by Thursday’s storm. 

The coastal town received about 10 inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service, but it was the 54 mph winds that knocked out power and uprooted trees. 

By Friday at 8 p.m., Central Maine Power Co. reported that of the utility’s 1,694 customers in Kennebunk, only two had power. In neighboring Kennebunkport, 1,674 of the town’s 3,780 customers had power restored by 8 p.m.

Kennebunk Light and Power customers fared better. Anna Henderson, general manager of the utility, said that by Friday evening, only about a dozen of its 7,500 customers were still without power. She expected to have all customers back online by Saturday afternoon. 

The power company had nine other mutual aid crews assist their two home crews, Henderson said, and they were able to work efficiently, starting with emergency situations and downed wires before turning to large distribution outages and then individual customers. 

She couldn’t speak to what Kennebunk Light and Power does differently from CMP but said they have a pretty compact area, covering parts of Kennebunk, Wells, Arundel and Lyman.

Henderson was pleased that the crews were able to restore power so quickly. 

“We’re pretty tired and exhausted,” she said. 

‘THIS ISN’T OUR FIRST RODEO’

The rural, sparsely populated town of Pownal in northern Cumberland County was also among the hardest hit. At the peak outages, all 854 CMP customers in the town were without power, and that was still true by midafternoon Friday. By 8 p.m., roughly 100 of those customers had power restored.

Tree and wire damage was widespread, including large limbs blocking a lane of traffic on Route 9 in two different places. On Elmwood Road, about two miles from the center of Pownal, a tree had fallen across both lanes, blocking the main route into Freeport.

Many locals ventured out to the Short Stop, a convenience store at the intersection of Route 9 and Elmwood Road, to pick up food or fill up gas cans for generators.

Ray Coffin, 70, who lives down the road in North Yarmouth, was among them. He said he lost power Wednesday evening and wasn’t expecting it back anytime soon.

“We got everything we need at home,” he said.

Coffin bought a generator sometime after the Ice Storm of 1998 and said it was “the best $6,000 I ever spent.” He typically loses power four or five times a winter, sometimes for multiple days, but with the generator, he doesn’t notice.

“It’s the only way to fly in Maine,” Coffin said.

Alpesh Patel, who owns the Short Stop, said the store was extremely busy on Thursday and Friday. They were running on a generator, too, but it didn’t affect their operations.

“It’s nice that we can be helping the community in times like this,” Patel said.

“Everyone here is prepared,” one of his workers chimed in from behind the counter. “This isn’t our first rodeo.”

A short drive down Route 9 from the Short Stop, Chris Silsbee was using a chain saw to cut up trees and branches that had fallen in the parking lot of Bradbury Mountain State Park. Silsbee is the park manager and said most Aprils he’s doing a different kind of maintenance.

“Usually, it’s mud season, but we’re prepared for anything,” he said while taking a break.

Silsbee has one other full-time employee helping clear debris but said workers from other parks are likely to come help over the weekend.

“We started getting calls this past week from people asking about the park as a place to watch the eclipse,” he said, referring to the Monday event. “So, we’ll make sure the trails that go to the top are clear. Safety is the biggest concern, so anything that’s still hanging we’ll make sure comes down.”

FALLING TREES

The Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library in Kennebunkport had set up an unofficial warming center Friday morning, with the generator running and coffee and doughnuts for residents. The power was restored midmorning. 

Around lunchtime, a group of 10 seniors – called the Old Goats – gathered around the table in the community room. The men, who range in age from 78 to 95, have been getting together every other week for decades, but Friday was the biggest group they’d had for some time. 

Most of them had lost power but most also had generators. Some of the men wanted to get out of the house just to escape the noise. 

Bill Dugan, 83, didn’t have a generator, and booked a hotel room before the house had even lost power. 

“This winter has been a lesson in that,” he said of being proactive. 

Driving through downtown Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, not much seemed amiss Friday afternoon. But outside of the main areas, the damage was more obvious. Huge trees were toppled, wires lay across the roads in some areas and other roads were closed off. 

At Jennifer Brooks’ house just over the Kennebunkport town line in Arundel, a large tree lay across the roof. 

Brooks, 54, had a generator running Friday but the tree took out her chimney so she couldn’t light her pellet stove. She was leaving to check on her mother and then heading to a hotel, she said over the noise of the generator. She didn’t expect tree removal services to get to her house before Monday. 

Ian Anderson was asleep when the tree fell on the house he was renting for the week. His mother left the room for just a minute and came back in to find a tree on top of the roof, he said. 

The tree didn’t break any windows or create any obvious damage to the roof, but the windshield on the family’s rental car was smashed. 

Overall they were “extremely lucky,” said Anderson, 44, who is from Brick Township, New Jersey. 

The tree draped across the roof is the fourth in a matter of weeks that Anderson has seen come down.

“I can’t get away from it,” he said. “One of my friends was like ‘Did you piss off the Lorax or something?’ ”

Staff Writer Eric Russell contributed to this report.

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