October went out like a lion along Maine’s midcoast region.
A three-day storm with hurricane-force winds downed trees and disrupted power for many Hancock County residents right before Halloween. And at one point, the storm gave residents on causeway-connected Mount Desert Island just a taste of true island life.
Mount Desert Island is connected to mainland Trenton by a narrow strip of road, and all power to it and several outer islands comes from electric poles lining one side of the road. While the causeway doesn’t face open ocean, both sides of the road can be exposed to ocean winds.
When winds kicked up to 70 miles per hour, Bangor Hydro interim spokeswoman Jen Brooker said, the causeway’s poles were in trouble.
“They were a direct hit,” Brooker said.
Early in the morning of October 29th, high winds caused one of the poles to partially fall. When utility workers tried to right the pole, Brooker said, more poles went down.
“It was a bit of a domino effect,” she said.
Several poles landed on the causeway, reducing island access to one lane and backing up traffic for miles. Eventually, as poles were being repositioned, both lanes of the causeway were blocked and access to the mainland was cut off for several hours.
Earl Brechlin, editor of the Mount Desert Islander, said MDI residents generally took the storm in stride. For most, it was little more than an inconvenience, he said. But the causeway’s power-line problems did serve as a wakeup call.
“It reminded everybody that you’re living on an island and there’s only one way [by road] out of Dodge,” Brechlin said.
The Hancock County Emergency Management Agency reported the economic impact of the storm was surprisingly minimal. There were no storm-related injuries and Hancock County town offices reported relatively little lasting damage from downed trees.
More than 28,000 Bangor Hydro customers were without power at the storm’s height, reported Brooker, and many were without power for several days. She said Bangor Hydro line repair crews worked 16-hour shifts staggered round the clock to restore power. They were joined by line workers from other parts of Maine and New Brunswick.
The wind never let up long enough to give workers a chance to make lasting headway, Brooker said. Workers restored power after the first night of the storm to all but 11,000 customers, only to have to deal with re-outages once daytime winds whipped up again.
“It’s difficult to work in these conditions,” Brooker said. “It’s one step forward and two steps back.”
Such prolonged outages left some Hancock County residents throwing out the contents of their freezers, and one Southwest Harbor restaurant reportedly closed early for the winter due to spoilage.
Bar Harbor harbormaster Charlie Phippen reported little damage in his harbor. That’s partly because the winds shifted fortuitously at the height of the storm, Phippen said, and partly because of the advanced planning of Bar Harbor boat owners. He said most local boat owners know enough to move their boats from Bar Harbor when a strong easterly wind is predicted.
“Most of them clear out and head for a protective place like Northeast Harbor,” Phippen said. “Bar Harbor is not a place to be in an easterly wind.”
The storm dramatically changed the plans of two cruise ships planning to dock over the weekend, Phippen said. One ship didn’t even venture close, while another came in just long enough to clear customs. Phippen conjectured that passengers aboard the ships might have gotten a bit more of a sea adventure than planned.
“I say they had a good ride,” he said.
Island residents in the area seemed relatively unfazed by the storm. Skip Stevens of Islesford said prolonged power outages are par for the course.
“[This] is something we assume is going to happen,” he said. “You’re talking Islesford now.”
Stevens said the initial outage happened at the same time that Islesford residents were holding their annual Halloween party. While not attending the party himself, Stevens reported that they simply carried on with flashlights after power was cut.
A relative newcomer to island living, Stevens didn’t scoff at mainland problems from the storm. But island residents are better equipped to ride out a storm, he said, having more independent generators and storm provisions than people on the mainland.
Overall, the power outage wasn’t much to write home about, Stevens said. Outages are “just a fact of life out here,” he said. “They can last a lot longer than thirty-six hours.”