In the aftermath of the brief storm on Tuesday night, several downed trees damaged wires that fed the Woodlawn Terrace housing facility in Brunswick. The terrace, which provides senior housing, was running on a generator during the power outage. The Brunswick-Topsham Housing Authority, which owns the building, said everyone was unharmed after the storm. Courtesy of Brunswick-Topsham Housing Authority

A fast-moving Tuesday night storm left hundreds without power for hours, shutting down businesses and events in its wake.

A total of 2,500 Central Maine Power customers lost power in the Brunswick area between Tuesday and Wednesday, with power restored to all but a few customers as of early Wednesday afternoon. The storm downed trees and took down wires, closing several businesses near downtown Brunswick as a result.

“It was a fast mover,” Fire Chief Ken Brillant said of the storm.

Brillant said primary lines came down in two locations on River Road and in one spot on Stone Street. Though Stone Street is not a major road with many houses, he said, the lines located on the road feed power to Woodlawn Terrace, a senior housing facility owned by the Brunswick-Topsham Housing Authority.

John Hodge of the Brunswick-Topsham Housing Authority told The Times Record that Woodlawn Terrace, which has 41 units, was running on a generator as CMP worked to restore power to the road. Hodge reported that all the residents are okay.

Brillant also reported an incident of carbon monoxide build up in a Brunswick home, where a power outage kicked on the resident’s automatic generator. No one was hurt in the incident, he said.

Brillant said that the air intake duct for the generator began sucking carbon monoxide into the home, causing carbon monoxide detectors to go off. He added that the generator was more than a safe distance from the home, and that yesterday’s conditions of an outage and heavy, humid air created a situation where the toxic gas could enter the home.

A ‘mind-boggling and devastating’ series of outages

Several businesses lost power in yesterday’s storm, prompting significant financial loss for some and inconveniencing customers.

The Federal Hotel on Water Street lost power close to 7 p.m. and remained without electricity for six hours, according to the hotel’s managing partner Gerard Kiladjian. While he said there was no loss of produce in the hotel’s restaurant, the business lost customers and, subsequently, the prepared food for the day.

“When you lose power in the summer, its much more difficult,” Kiladjian said, explaining that rooms can heat up without air conditioning running through the hotel. Thankfully, he said, no guests ended up leaving. He also acknowledged that power outages have been more frequent this year compared to other years of working in Brunswick.

Brunswick resident Jeanne Burton was eating on the patio of Joshua’s Restaurant & Pub — a long-running tradition in her family before attending shows at Maine State Music Theatre — when it started raining Tuesday evening. She and her family moved inside and, shortly after, witnessed strong winds knock over tables and toss dishes to the ground. The restaurant lost power shortly after.

“I’ve never seen the wind blow like that,” Burton said. The show, “Funny Girl,” they were about to see was canceled later that evening as a result of outages.

Burton said that having lived in Brunswick all her life, there seems to be more high wind coming with storms, causing trees to fall and damage wires. A subscriber at MSMT for more than a decade, this was the first time she had ever had a MSMT performance canceled because of weather.

The Brunswick-Topsham Housing Authority maintenance crew cleans up the mess left by Tuesday’s thunderstorm in Brunswick. Paul Bagnall/The Times Record

Maine State Music Theatre, which hosts performances at Pickard Theater on Bowdoin College’s campus, canceled its nearly sold-out evening performance of “Funny Girl” after postponing the show until 8:30 p.m. in hopes that power would be restored in time. MSMT reported that a crowd of attendees and employees stood outside the theater amid the outage.

The outage was the second disruption so far in the performance season, MSMT said in a press release. June 18 performances of “South Pacific” were canceled after Bowdoin College experienced an outage due to a transformer issue.

“It was incredibly disappointing, because the Bowdoin power failure canceled [‘South Pacific’] as well,” said Gray resident and MSMT subscriber Peter Pinkerton. “So, we’re 0-2 this season.”

Pinkerton said he and his husband had reserved 15 tickets for Tuesday night and were able to exchange two tickets for a Saturday afternoon show at the theater. The remaining tickets were credited for the next show season.

“It’s a first-world problem,” Pinkerton said, while also noting that infrastructure is not resilient enough to take on the weather changes in Maine. “Severity of our weather has been getting significantly worse in the last four or five years.”

A spokesperson from Bowdoin College said that the June 18 transformer issue was a result of a fuse exacerbated by warm weather.

“The sheer and unbelievable coincidence of the power going out at the theater for the same Tuesday night subscription audience when they were to see ‘South Pacific,’ and then three weeks later attend ‘Funny Girl,’ is mind-boggling and devastating to all of us here at Maine State Music Theatre,” said Curt Dale Clark, MSMT’s artistic director. “Our inability to get these patrons in to see the show due to limited tickets available is heartbreaking — as the schedule is unfortunately inflexible and we cannot extend with ‘White Christmas’ set to open on July 17.”

Clark estimated that the theater will lose about $75,000 on each of the three shows that have been canceled because of power outages, the one on Tuesday and two on June 18. He said the total, about $225,000, is about 5%–6% of the organization’s total $8 million annual budget.

Clean-up in progress at Woodlawn Terrace the day after the thunder storm ripped through Brunswick. Paul Bagnall/The Times Record

Of the 400 or more subscribers affected by Tuesday’s outage, about 170 will be able to get tickets to another showing of “Funny Girl” before it closes. About 145 other people who were in the audience Tuesday were single-ticket buyers and will be offered refunds.

“These were the exact same people (at Tuesday’s show) who lost ‘South Pacific.’ I walked around the theater and saw looks of abject disappointment in people’s faces,” Clark said. “I take my responsibility to subscribers so seriously. They are a big reason why we’ve survived all these years. I owe them these shows.”

Clark said some subscribers who could not be moved to another performance of a canceled show have offered to donate the refund money to MSMT.

Clark added that the outages experienced this season were more than he has encountered in his 18-year career at MSMT and that they have financially impacted the theater.

MSMT said that those who were planning to see this week’s canceled show will be contacted by the box office.

According to the Topsham Fire Department, there were four to five trees down throughout, but they have already been cleaned up with no road closures. Topsham avoided the brunt of the storm, with one business at 11 Winner Circle near the Topsham Fair Mall having HVAC issues.

Paul Bagnall of The Times Record and Ray Routhier of the Portland Press Herald contributed to this story.