GRAY, Maine — Many Maine residents spent the day Thursday assessing the damage to their vehicles, homes, businesses and roads in the wake of heavy rain that caused flooding around the state the day before.
Thousands of Mainers woke up without power in the aftermath of the storm, which dumped around 6 inches of rain in most areas, and nearly 10 inches in Waldo County. At 4 p.m., there were still more than 441 Emera Maine customers and 256 Central Maine Power customers waiting to have their electricity restored.
But one woman from Bucksport, which may have received as much rain as neighboring Waldo County, according to unofficial reports, said she went to sleep Wednesday night feeling grateful she lives in a place where people help each other out. Leslie Seifert Wombacher said that the basement of her rental property had 7 inches of water in it and her husband was stuck in Ellsworth because the roads were closed.
“All you’ve got to do is put out the SOS,” she said. “I said on Facebook, ‘I’ve got water in the basement and does anybody have a pump?’ I had four pumps before I even turned around. The people came with them to help. That’s the great thing about living here — people have your back.”
The Maine Marine Patrol reported on Thursday morning the entire Maine coast is closed to digging clams, quahogs, oysters or mussels for the next several days because of the excessive amount of rain and resulting runoff.
Regional School Unit 25 in Bucksport closed all town schools because of the storm, which also caused multiple roads to be closed at its height. Interim Town Manager Susan Lessard said that all the washouts in the town-maintained roads would be filled by the end of the day on Thursday. But a mile-long section of Route 46, a state-maintained road, was still closed in Bucksport pending the replacement of a four-foot culvert that was “overwhelmed” by all the rain, according to Dale Doughty, the director of maintenance and operations for the Maine Department of Transportation.
“The hope is that the road will be open again tomorrow,” he said Thursday afternoon.
One woman from Ellsworth said the rain and runoff washed away a 500-foot section of the private dirt road to her home, leaving her stranded there for the time being. Tammy Willey said that her homeowner’s insurance would not cover the repair, which will cost at least $1,200.
“Yesterday it looked like there was a river running down. It wasn’t a road, it was a river bed,” she said Thursday.
In Brunswick, firefighters drained at least four basements, including Curtis Memorial Library and Berean Baptist Church. Police and firefighters closed Union Street in downtown Brunswick and urged drivers to move vehicles from other nearby streets that had flooded.
“The water overwhelmed a lot of the drain systems,” Brunswick Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Emerson said. “We had three or four buildings that actually had enough water that it required firefighters to help drain the basements.”
Flash flooding closed Route 9, also known as River Road in Brunswick, to traffic including school buses, CBS 13 reported. As a result, Bus 54 was only able to pick up students along a 3-mile stretch between Rocky Hill Drive and Leighton Road on Thursday morning. The school told parents who live outside that area they would have to get their children to school another way. Late Thursday afternoon, the Department of Public Works announced the road would reopen by 6 p.m.
More stories of the havoc the storm wreaked were shared Thursday.
High tidewaters along the brackish Kennebec River collided with torrential rain early Wednesday afternoon, flooding a Central Maine Power substation across the street from Bath Iron Works and prompting CMP to cut power to the shipyard and much of Bath, Phippsburg and West Bath.
The shutdown stranded the operator of a crane at the shipyard for nearly an hour before he was rescued by the local fire department using a ladder truck.
Acting on a phone call from city officials, CMP sent a team to the flooded substation, adjacent to The Cabin pizza shop and across Washington Street from the shipyard, CMP spokeswoman Gail Rice said. That team determined the water to be a threat to public safety.
“The flooding was getting into some of our energized equipment at the substation,” Rice said. “You don’t want to be anywhere near that.”
CMP shut off power at about 2:30 p.m., leaving the shipyard in the dark and prompting BIW to send the first shift home early and cancel second-shift workers at the main yard in Bath as well as at the consolidated warehouse and Harding Plant in Brunswick, BIW spokesman Matt Wickenheiser said.
Meanwhile, much of downtown Bath, Phippsburg and a few customers in West Bath were also without power — altogether about 4,000 customer accounts were affected, Rice said.
Bath Police Lt. Bob Savary said officers “scrambled a bit” to place stop signs at intersections, and the Vine Street onramp to the Sagadahoc Bridge was closed due to flooding.
By about 4 p.m., the water had receded enough that CMP restored power at the substation and started bringing customers back online — about 3,000 accounts at 4 p.m. and the last few by 4:30 p.m.
In the meantime, though, dozens of cars in the shipyard parking lot were underwater, which Savary estimated to be about 4 feet deep.
Wickenheiser said BIW offered rides home to employees who couldn’t reach their cars. He said he couldn’t estimate how much it cost BIW to shut down Wednesday.
During the heaviest rain Wednesday, a three-car collision closed Route 1 briefly near Cook’s Corner in Brunswick, sending two patients to Maine Medical Center.
Just before 1 p.m., two cars stopped in the travel lane because of heavy rain, and a third car rear-ended the second, which then struck the first, Brunswick police Cmdr. Marc Hagan said.
The driver of the third car, Angelica Dwyer, 22, of Lisbon, and her passenger, Timothy Dodson, 23, were taken to Maine Medical Center and have since been released, according to a hospital spokeswoman.
The highest precipitation total statewide was recorded in Searsport in Waldo County, according to the National Weather Service’s Gray forecast center, with 9.75 inches falling in that town. Belmont, also in Waldo County, received 7.6 inches.
The weather service’s Caribou forecast center reported Dedham received 8.19 inches of rain while Sangerville in Piscataquis County received 7.28 inches of rain.
Houlton saw 7 inches, according to the weather service, while Princeton in Washington County saw 6.8, Brewer had 6.6 and Bucksport had 6.2.
Bangor’s rainfall total checked in at 5.5 inches, according to the weather service.
According to the National Weather Service’s Gray forecast center, Portland set a daily record with 5.56 inches of rain, smashing the previous mark of 2.14 set in 1920.
BDN writers Beth Brogan and Abigail Curtis contributed to this report.
