City Fire Inspector Mike Corey peers down a hatch to view electrical components under the sidewalk outside the parking garage. Robert Lowell / American Journal

A security car is parked Monday outside the closed Westbrook parking garage. Robert Lowell / American Journal

Westbrook’s $21 million parking garage  is shut down temporarily after a violent storm flooded the electrical room in the recently opened downtown facility.

The city says “several critical electrical components” were damaged last weekend by intense rain.

“Security guards noticed smoke coming from the electrical room and immediately notified emergency personnel, who cleared the garage and cut all power,” Westbrook Assistant City Administrator and City Clerk Angela Holmes said in an email to the American Journal on Monday.

Holmes provided City Hall’s official response to email requests for comments that were sent to acting Mayor David Morse, City Administrator Jerre Bryant, and the parking garage’s building project manager, Robyn Saunders.

Fire Chief Steve Sloan at the scene Tuesday said the garage, adjacent to the Vertical Harvest building, is still an active construction site and storm drains are filtered, impeding runoff water outflow, and it led to flooding.

Sloan said the city received an inch and a half of rain in 15 minutes on Saturday. “The skies opened up,” Sloan said. “Nobody is at fault.”

Sloan hopes the garage can reopen “within a week or so.”

Central Maine Power workers Tuesday lifted a steel hatch on a sidewalk on the William Clarke Drive side of the garage that protects a submerged transformer. Opening the hatch allowed city Fire Inspector Mike Corey to view the transformer. “I wanted to look to make sure everything is good,” Corey said, and he added CMP is fine with that component.

Corey said they were looking Tuesday at a transformer inside the garage electrical room that might have been damaged.

“The water-damaged electrical equipment needs to be replaced before power can be restored,” Holmes said. “We don’t want to install replacement equipment until we can confirm that water damage won’t occur again.”

“We are taking mitigation steps now,” Sloan said.

No one was reported injured in the incident. “In the interest of public safety, the garage will remain temporarily closed,” Holmes said.

The cost of damage was unknown early this week. Financial responsibility will be “largely dependent upon what we discover,” Holmes said, adding that the city will be in close contact with its insurance carrier.

The free parking garage with 407 spaces opened at the end of May after months of delay that the city said then was caused by unavailability of electrical components. The four-story downtown parking garage is on Vertical Way between William Clarke Drive and Mechanic Street.

The city has free downtown surface parking lots on Main, Church and Ash streets.