Losing power periodically is a regular fact of life on islands, but recently Cranberry Island residents faced a more serious power situation when a critical underwater cable became unstable.
In late February, Cranberry residents suddenly found themselves without electricity during a winter storm.
Cranberry Isles Selectman Richard Beal went out to investigate and quickly discovered that the problem was not as simple as a downed power line. After years of wear from tide and rocks, the cable bringing power from Manset, on Mount Desert Island, to Great Cranberry Island was damaged on both the Cranberry and Manset sides of the line.
Because power then runs from Cranberry to Islesford via another underwater cable, the outage affected residents on both islands. “We had repaired the cable on the Manset side with a splice two years ago and covered it,” said Bangor Hydro employee Scott Richards. “But between the wave action and the rocks, the cable had become uncovered and worn below the original repair.”
Within a few hours, Bangor Hydro repair crews were able to patch together a temporary repair using epoxies and PVC piping. “To continue to provide power, they had to bundle the regular three lines together into one line,” says Beal. This fragile fix was not ideal, as pulling the necessary power for two islands on one line stressed the cable and made it vulnerable to further problems.
Within a week, Bangor Hydro had put together a plan for a more permanent fix. After an extensive search, 400 feet of shielded marine cable were located in Texas and shipped up to Maine, to be spliced into the existing line at the worn locations.
But the line repair would mean hours of no power, a matter of great concern to Beal and others. “It was cold out, and we’ve got a lot of elderly people who depend on power only to run their furnaces,” says Beal. “Plus we’ve got some folks with serious health problems that need power to run their medical equipment.”
In response to these concerns, Beal and Bangor Hydro arranged to have a large generator brought to the island to provide power during the time of the outage. Stationed in the yard of Longfellow School on Great Cranberry, lines were run from the generator in both directions Great Cranberry residents and to the connection point to Islesford.
“I can’t say enough about the responsiveness of Bangor Hydro and Scott Richards,” says Beal. “They constantly gave information and allowed us to keep residents up-to-date on what was happening.”
This free-flow of information allowed Cranberry residents to hammer out contingency plans for the school and elderly residents in case of an unanticipated but possible long-term outage.
“On the homefront, people were very understanding,” says Beal. “[Selectman] Dan Lief and [Fire Chief] Courtney Chaplin brought a plan into fruition that would have protected citizenry in case of an outage up to a week.” In the end, the repair took only five hours and was completed without difficulty.
The current repairs are expected to hold for the foreseeable future, but a permanent solution will need to be found to secure power for the long-term. “This is an interim repair,” says Beal. “Interim to me means, what, two, three, four years?”
Scott Richards agrees, “The Bangor Hydro engineering department will be doing a study to look at all of our underwater cables-the ones from Northeast Harbor to Sutton and Bear Islands and the line from Great Cranberry to Islesford-to plan for either replacement or future repair. But for now, I feel confident in the repair we did and we have extra cable on hand if we need it.”
For Richard Beal, the most heartening result of the power outage is the long-term planning that resulted from the emergency. “Growing up in Ellsworth, I can’t imagine folks worrying about each other and knowing each other’s needs to this level,” he says. “But the concern for each other’s well-being and the thought that went into this, that’s what living on an island means. We didn’t need to use the plans this time, but now we have them in case of another emergency.”