On Oct. 17, Central Maine Power spokesperson Gail Rice said that during the height of the Oct. 15 Nor’easter, “just under 3800 customers were without power around noontime in Lincoln County.”
“We finished up [getting the power restored to residents] in Lincoln County on Saturday [Oct. 16] around 1-2 p.m.,” she said.
According to Rice, coastal communities took the brunt of the storm from Portland, “all the way up to the Rockland area” and Lincoln County was hit dead-on.
In Newcastle, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official weather observer Arlene Cole reported measuring 3.55 inches of rain on Oct. 15 and another .18 more Oct. 16.
“I think we got more than anybody else,” she said.
The morning of Oct. 15, emergency crews in Waldoboro scrambled to keep up with downed trees and wires. At 10:45 a.m., the Waldoboro Fire Dept. had received eight calls of downed trees and power lines with only eight firefighters on duty.
Fire crews focused on getting barriers up while CMP shut down the power at downed lines.
A CMP crewmember said at the time, they “were scraping by at the moment.”
Waldoboro was “just on the edge” of starting emergency management, said Waldoboro EMA Director Kyle Santheson.
“Then it just stopped blowing, and we were fine,” Santheson said.
At the height of the storm Friday, Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency was reporting 130 roads without power in Lincoln County.
In anticipation of the storm, CMP spokesman John Carroll said the company’s storm response team began preparations earlier in the week.
“We had already put tree crews and contractors on alert, [and] we were able to deploy them immediately to the hardest hit areas,” Carroll said.
CMP also said crews were reporting 40 to 50 mph winds in some areas at the height of the storm.
CMP worked around the clock to fix the damage and restore customer service.
Information on storms and outages may be found at CMP at www.cmpco.com.
