BANGOR, Maine — Strong winds that whipped through Maine on Thursday knocked out power to more than 9,000 customers in at least a dozen counties and ripped down trees — some big enough to block roadways.
“We’re getting one call after another right now,” a Penobscot Regional Communications Center dispatcher said just before noon. “We’ve had a lot. There are wires down and trees down, [and] we’ve had a lot of trees blocking roads.”
One large tree that fell blocked U.S. Route 2 in Orono, near Silver’s Auto Parts, for about 30 minutes, Orono police Capt. Josh Ewing said.
“It was a good-sized tree,” he said. “The fire department and public works went down and cleared it.”
Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. had 3,735 customers without power Thursday morning, mostly in Penobscot County, and Central Maine Power had 5,662 powerless, with 3,582 in Lincoln County.
“Power is expected to be restored in three to four hours, but continued strong winds may cause additional outages and delay restoration time,” Bangor Hydro said in a news release.
Both companies warned customers to be cautious around power lines brought down by the winds.
“Stay away from downed power lines,” the CMP website warned. “Even lines that appear ‘dead’ can be deadly.”
By 4 p.m., CMP had reduced the number of customers without power to 978 and Bangor Hydro still had 2,651 without power.
“Outages are scattered across Penobscot County, with a large number of customers in Hampden affected,” Bangor Hydro said in a statement late Thursday afternoon. “Heavy leaves weighing on tree limbs have contributed to the number of outages.”
A couple of heavy wind storms before snow comes can be a good thing. It’s better to have the weak trees come down now rather than wait for heavy snow and ice later on when losing the power can mean days without heat for some without wood stoves or generators.
I’ll be honest. I never thought about it that way.
The only thing worse is an early snow storm with leaves still on. Remember that storm last fall that hit Worcester Massachusetts?That took weeks to clean up and restore power. Those Flatlanders have no patience. That was ugly.
Yes, I do. Living in Bangor I don’t lose power that often, even during a storm so I don’t give it a lot of thought.
“Nevah, evah, evah, touch a downed wiah.” :-)
hehehehe…like “ALGORE” did?
If solar energy was more affordable, people would not lose their electricity.
Saw an outage got the lights by Kev-Lan, you think as busy as the intersection gets that while the lights were out that BPD cruiser sitting at the entry to Kev-Lan would have directed traffic, but instead he must have been distracted with tweeting pictures of it. For some it was free for all, drive on through without slowing down or stopping and again, cop does nothing.
Even a policeman trained in manual traffic control is more than smart enough not to become the next text messaging victim. That traffic is too fast to control with a white glove.
and him sitting on the side of the road doing nothing could produce the same results
Are student drivers not taught in what to do when they come to an intersection where the traffic light is disabled any more? It’s not a complicated procedure.
Yes and No, adults know better, students should too, but not many drivers on the road have no intelligence for the law until they see a cop, and all the sudden, they know all the traffic laws…..
I suppose so, though in a case like an intersection with the signal out, a person might hope that self-preservation would step in ahead of “cop didn’t see it, I didn’t do it”. :)
Y..M..C..A…