By staff reports

A warm spell hit central Maine Wednesday, carrying with it high winds that caused arcing power lines and downed trees.

A man was sleeping when a tree crashed into his bedroom in Auburn. Sagging power lines in Turner landed on a TV camera truck, trapping those inside.

Nearly 60,000 Central Maine Power Co. customers lost power across the state. Hardest hit was the Lewiston area where 14,450 were without power by nightfall. Residents on roughly 30 streets in Lewiston and a half dozen streets in Auburn were without electricity shortly after noon.

“There are a bunch of things going on,” said Lewiston police Lt. Tom Avery. “Things are blowing around here, there and everywhere.”

Winds were measured at 40 to 50 mph in most areas and up to 60 mph in Augusta, according to a CMP spokesman. Random gusts of up to 70 mph were reported in Washington and Hancock counties.

Dozens of reports of wires in roadways kept emergency personnel and power company line crews scrambling throughout the morning and afternoon. Isolated thunderstorms peppered the region.

In Auburn, a 30-foot tree limb blew down at the Monroe Street home of Paul Morency. The limb fell onto a van and then crashed through a third-floor window, into a bedroom where a man was sleeping.

“That woke him up in a hurry,” Morency said. “It landed maybe 3 feet off his bed.”

In Sabattus, there was a report of a roof getting ripped from a large metal storage barn as whipping winds continued into late afternoon. Details were not available.

Sections of Lewiston remained dark overnight after CMP asked that streetlights be kept off in certain areas while repairs were being made. City officials notified police and other agencies that parts of the downtown would be in darkness throughout the night.

Livermore Falls Police Chief Ernest Steward Jr. said it felt as if the town was under attack Wednesday afternoon as the warm wind came up and warm air came rolling in.

A roof blew off a trailer on Souther Road and a big picture window in the lobby of the Livermore Falls Town Office blew in, he said Wednesday.

“Luckily, nobody was in the lobby,” he said.

Firefighters were coming in with a tarp to cover it up, he said.

A tree came down on Cedar Street and knocked an entry way and electrical box off a home, he said. A number of trees fell on wires and knocked them down or caught on fire, he said.

Power was out all over town, he said.

Dispatch emergency services were knocked out for 15 minutes at the police station when the generator didn’t kick in, he said. Town workers went up on the roof and got it started, he said.

Franklin County Emergency Management Director Tim Hardy said there were power outages and trees on wires throughout Franklin County.

He rode around the county checking rivers and streams and everything was all right by about 3:30 p.m., he said Wednesday.

The ice jam on the Sandy River in Farmington hadn’t moved, he said, but he would keep an eye on it throughout the storm and after the rain stops.

That’s when the rivers are most likely to rise, he said.

A CMP spokesman said crews would be working throughout the night to restore power to homes and businesses. More than 150 line workers and additional crews were at work Wednesday night.

Aside from Lewiston, the Augusta area was also heavily affected, with 11,800 customers in the dark at the peak of the outages. In Brunswick, there were 9,700, and Farmington had 3,200 homes and businesses lose power.