BRUNSWICK
The first snow storm of the season in the Mid-coast found many motorists off the road and left hundreds of residents without power through the course of the day, and emergency personnel busy responding to crashes and downed trees and power lines.
“The majority of issues yesterday during the storm were traffic related, so our sheriff ’s office and the local police departments were very busy with cars off the road in various means, both slide-offs and there were a couple rollovers” said Eric Sawyer, the Sagadahoc County EMA Director, this morning. “Luckily no injuries there that I was aware of.
“And of course later on in the day,” he added, “we started dealing with power outages.”
Both the heavy winds and wet heavy snow were contributing to those power outages. As of 6 a.m. there were still roughly 1,000 Central Maine Power Co. customers without power within Sagadahoc County.
“We will keep a close eye on that,” Sawyer said, adding they would work with CMP as it prioritizes power restoration efforts.
The utility has allocated resources and will work with regional partners to get power restored, Sawyer said, and an additional priority will be polling locations because voting is Tuesday.
Area law enforcement agencies called in personnel to help respond to the volume of calls coming in.
“We certainly did that here in Sagadahoc County,” Sawyer said. “We called in pretty much any available sheriff ’s deputies as well as officers from local police departments.”
Meanwhile fire and rescue personnel were busy providing support to traffic control measures and clearing downed trees and limbs not touching power lines, making sure the roads were passable and people were safe.
Starting at about 11 a.m., Sagadahoc County Sheriff ’s department responded to 28 crashes Sunday according to its incident log. Brunswick Police Department responded to 18 calls crashes between 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. involving little to no damage, according to Deputy Chief Marc Hagan, and only a crash on Durham Road required transport to the hospital. Topsham police responded to handful of crashes as well, including a tanker truck carrying milk that overturned on Meadow Road.
“It’s the first storm of the season so I think it always catches people a bit off guard,” Sawyer said. “Most of what we saw yesterday looks speed related. The weather of course didn’t help and people didn’t know how slippery it was.”
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