Bangor residents emerged from their homes Tuesday morning to find a city covered in downed trees and blown debris as they shopped for hot coffee, propane and gasoline, and food that could withstand what could be days without power.
Nearly 420,000 Mainers awoke without electricity Tuesday, a day after wind gusts of up to 68 mph were recorded at Bangor International Airport. Bangor set records for both precipitation and temperature, at 2.52 inches of rain and 61 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively.
But despite the dangerous conditions and uncertainty about when power will be restored, Mainers came together to help each other during the storm and prepare for the days ahead.
Maegan Alley was driving to her home in Stetson on Monday when her car was on the brink of running out of gas as many stations were closed due to power outages. When she finally did find an open gas station, it was only accepting cash, which she did not have.
An unknown man gave Alley $20 to buy gas so she could get home.
“I didn’t come prepared,” Alley said of the storm, which left her home with no power and no running water. She was picking up water and food at Hannaford on Tuesday morning.
Broken branches and uprooted trees could be seen around nearly every corner in Bangor, with seemingly no part of the city left unscathed. On Main Street, a tree branch narrowly missed falling on the Paul Bunyan statue outside of the Cross Insurance Center.
It’s the worst storm Nelson Savage said he’s seen in the 57 years he’s lived at his home near the intersection of Montgomery and Norfolk streets. The high winds took out two 40-year-old trees he planted with his son.
The falling trees avoided his house, a light pole, flag pole, stop sign and his fence. Savage said he isn’t sure how that happened but was grateful for the lack of damage.
His fence was removable to
Adam Treat and Hadley Burrill, employees with Green Cuts Lawn Care and Services, moved Savage’s fence before cutting up the trees. They were reinstalling the fence before going to five or six more jobs they had lined up Monday.
They weren’t expecting the storm to be this bad, especially after the projected hurricane in September wasn’t very strong.
“We figured there’d be a couple trees down but not as many as there are,” Treat said.
Nick Oettinger of Winterport saw the high wind warnings days before the storm, and figured his home would lose power due to falling branches. He has a gas stove and generator, and he’s been watching movies with his family and was picking up food at Hannaford on Tuesday to prepare for a game night in the evening.
“Mainers are tough and we won’t let this slow us down,” Oettinger said.
It could take days for power to be restored to Bangor residents. Versant is assessing the damage in eastern and northern Maine, including broken poles and downed power lines.
“We have damage at our substations that needs to be repaired before we can move to distribution lines,” Judy Long, a spokesperson for Versant, said Tuesday. “That’s our focus today.”
Of Versant’s 160,000 customers, 95,000 did not have power Tuesday morning. The company will work to restore power through the end of the week, she said.
“Our approach is to try to go after damage to circuits that serve the largest number of customers,” she said, which does not necessarily mean tackling cities before more rural areas.
Versant began preparing for the storm last week, relying on daily updates from its meteorologist and the National Weather Service.
“We were ready Monday morning with our internal crews and support staff as well as contractors knowing this storm was ready to be impactful,” Long said. “We feel like we were prepared.”
Jeannine Moran walked out of Lowe’s in Bangor and loaded a portable kerosene heater into her vehicle Tuesday afternoon.
“I was prepared, and I had a heater, but mine decided to quit,” she said. “I buy one every few years just in case.”
Bangor resident Michelle Buan and her 3-year-old son, Elliot Hanson, stopped at Target to buy last-minute Christmas gifts and a lantern after the storm.
Buan lives in the Fairmount neighborhood and lost power, which means her family will postpone its trip to Canada for the holidays, but hopefully only by a day or so. She didn’t realize how destructive the storm would be, she said.
When her family returned from dinner Monday night, it found a large tree branch in their driveway, where two cars are normally parked.
“It was sheer luck that one of our cars didn’t get smashed,” she said. “We took our second car in to get winter tires installed, and it got stuck when the power went out. They couldn’t get it down until this morning.”
Steven Crabtree was playing video games Monday afternoon when he heard a crash and lost power. A large tree had been uprooted, taking out multiple power poles and lines along Grove Street.
A crew with a bucket truck was working to cut up the tree suspended in mid-air, but Crabtree and his family weren’t expecting power to return Tuesday.
He remembers the storm of 1998 that took out power for thousands and coated everything in ice, meaning he didn’t have to go to school for a while. It was significantly colder during that storm.
“The one good thing is the temps haven’t dropped, so we don’t have to worry about our pipes freezing,” Crabtree said.
Sarah Saltzman, who lives on Hudson Street, spent nearly an hour driving home on Monday instead of her usual 10-minute route because so many fallen trees were blocking roads.
“The winds were stronger than we expected,” said Saltzman, who knew there would be rain but hadn’t anticipated the force of the winds. She was shopping for water, food and cat litter at Hannaford on Tuesday.
Saltzman was with Kathy Brouillette, who said the winds at her home were strong enough to shift her porch.
Both Saltzman and Brouillette are running generators at their homes while they wait for power to be restored.
Along the coast, nearly all of Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor and Southport were without power as of 1 p.m. Tuesday. Cars lined up at the gas station in Boothbay Harbor to fill containers with gas for their generators. Only two of the four pumps were working, as the gas station itself was running on a generator.
One of the only buildings in Southport with power and internet was the Southport Memorial Library. About a dozen residents gathered for the annual Holiday Open House to eat snacks, socialize and use the internet, though most people on the island of about 650 year-round residents have generators, said Library Director Jen Britton.
BDN writer Jules Walkup contributed to this report. Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.