Thursday, May 26, 2005

Winds take down trees, power

Published in the Current

(May 26, 2005): High winds downed trees and limbs and took out power to more than 13,000 homes in Southern Maine Monday night, leaving some without power into Tuesday afternoon.

Broad Cove in Cape Elizabeth had some outages Tuesday morning, according to Cape Police Chief Neil Williams. Some “very small pockets” in Scarborough were still out Tuesday afternoon, said Central Maine Power spokeswoman Gail Rice, who said the company hoped to have all power restored by midnight.

She said forecast high winds for Tuesday night might cause more damage and slow repair work.

Several areas in Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough and South Portland had outages ranging from around an hour to several hours Monday night.

The storm also kept local public work crews busy. Scarborough Public Works Director Mike Shaw said he had six workers out for a good portion of Monday night dealing with fallen trees.

The storms also have caused some minor beach erosion, damaged the stairs at Higgins Beach and caused some minor damage at the pier system at Pine Point Fisherman's Co-op.

Shaw said the department has been fortunate there has not been any major damage such as roads washing out. Looking at the bright side, he said things would be far worse if it were snow rather than rain.