ISLESBORO, Maine — Maine’s year-round island residents are used to winter weather, with high winds, huge snowdrifts and seas big enough even for the hardiest of lobster fishermen to call a temporary halt to fishing.
But this week’s storm is predicted to be so significant that Islesboro medical officials have asked all residents with “acute and chronic health issues” consider going to the mainland for its duration.
“We could find ourselves without ferry service and the ambulance and its crew might have difficulty getting to your house, so please find a mainland place to stay if you feel you could be at risk for becoming more ill by tomorrow,” according to the email sent Monday afternoon by staff at the Islesboro Health Center.
Sandy Oliver, the vice chair of the Islesboro Board of Selectmen, said it is the first time she remembers seeing this request from the health center. She didn’t know for sure whether any residents heeded the advice and headed to the mainland but wouldn’t be surprised if some islanders had done so.
“I saw that and I thought, that’s a good idea,” she said. “There’s considerable concern that we wouldn’t be able to get people off the island. Generally, we’re about 45 minutes away from the hospital. But with high winds likely, the ferry won’t run. And I don’t think they’re going to ask LifeFlight to come in.”
Owen Howell, a physician’s assistant at the center, said islanders don’t always have so much advance notice about bad weather, and the medical staff wanted to encourage them to use the extra time.
“It seems like the meteorologists have a pretty good handle on this one,” he said. “We’re just trying to be proactive in taking care of our neighbors.”
The Maine State Ferry, which travels the 3 miles to Lincolnville Beach and back, generally is docked at Islesboro overnight, in case islanders have medical emergencies and need to get to the hospital. But the ferry captains who serve the state’s island communities will look at the conditions Tuesday morning and decide whether it is safe to make the trip.
“It doesn’t look good,” John Schmitt, the terminal agent in Rockland, said. “Tomorrow it’s going to be a huge wind. When it’s blowing a gale, it’s not fun.”
Islesboro residents know that better than many Mainers. After the early November snowstorm that dumped a foot of wet, heavy snow across the state, the whole island was left without power for 2½ days.
“We’re still cleaning up from that storm,” Town Manager Janet Anderson said. “There’s so many dead trees and slash here, it looks like a disaster area. If you have a wood furnace, this is the place to be, I guess.”
While Islesboro residents hope for a better outcome than in November — at least as far as their trees and power lines are concerned — they are preparing for the worst. Fred Porter, the Islesboro director of public safety, said the town has done a lot of storm planning and is ready to activate an emergency operations strategy. Officials may decide to open the town’s Red Cross emergency shelter at Islesboro Central School, but the Islesboro Community Center was ready to open as a warming center as early as Monday night.
“Snowstorms we don’t sweat too much about, until the weathermen start using big words like they did with this one: ‘epic,’ ‘historic,’ one guy used ‘bombastic,’” Porter said. “Storms are changing. Each year, they’ve gotten a little bit worse. … Pre-planning is your most important thing.”
He recalled a bad snowstorm two years ago that left emergency vehicles and even plow trucks stranded in snowdrifts. Porter was trapped in his cruiser for 2½ hours while he waited for visibility to improve.
“That was a very scary night,” he said. “I’ve never seen a storm like that. It totally disabled our island and most of the midcoast area.”
For this storm, though, islanders mostly are checking to make sure they have enough fuel for generators or wood to feed their hungry stoves. Others who have neither will make their way to the community center, where manager Greg Barron expects to provide heat, showers, a place to sleep or a way to charge electrical devices for as many folks who need the help.
“We ensure there’s a place for people in the community to go,” he said.
Islesboro resident Maggy Willcox said her family is stocking up on firewood, drinking water and fresh batteries. But that’s not all they need to weather the storm.
“We make sure there are enough good books and wine,” she wrote in an email to the BDN.
Farther south, on Monhegan, the 69 or so people who live 10 miles out to sea all year round don’t seem to be succumbing to blizzard hysteria, according to Lisa Brackett, the proprietor of L. Brackett and Son, the island’s only store still open. Unlike the scene at grocery and hardware stores in Boston and New York, residents were not frantically buying her out of batteries and potato chips, she said Monday.
“Everybody seems pretty calm,” Brackett said by telephone. “It’s not really crazy. Because winters are the way they are here, I think everybody’s already got their supplies in.”
That’s not to say that Monhegan islanders were immune to the storm-preparation fever that gripped the Northeast on Monday, in advance of the predicted high winds and heavy snowfall.
“They’ll probably be pulling their skiffs up,” Brackett said. “And people are digging up their snowshoes.”