LEWISTON – A house caught fire in New Gloucester and a garage was damaged in Hartford on Friday night during an intense windstorm that brought down trees and wires across Maine and produced a lightning strike on top of Mt. Washington.
Officials in Androscoggin, Franklin, Oxford and Cumberland counties said late Friday that no injuries were reported due to the storm, which produced wind gusts of up to 70 mph.
Central Maine Power Co. reported 44,000 of its customers were without electricity at midnight Friday.
No shelters had been set up for those without heat, dispatchers in the four counties said about 10 p.m. Deputies and rescue personnel in Androscoggin and Cumberland counties were checking on people with medical needs, setting up generators and other equipment, dispatchers said late Friday.
In New Gloucester, a one-story home at 115 Sunset Shores ignited at an electrical box on the exterior, sending flames up the outside of the home, a spokesman said. The fire erupted about 8 p.m. and was “most likely” related to the storm, the spokesman said. No one was injured.
In the Oxford County town of Hartford, a tree fell onto a garage on Blueberry Drive, but no one was injured. Dispatcher Candy Sneed said at 10:12 p.m. Friday that the communications center in Paris had taken almost 100 calls since midnight Thursday, almost five times the usual number. “Most of them have been trees on fire and wires down, she said, all related to the high winds.
One of the hardest-hit areas Friday was the heavily wooded territory around Bridgton. There, 8,500 Central Maine Power Co. customers were without power in the middle of the day. There were 6,500 out in Lewiston on Friday night and another 5,900 in Brunswick. Farmington, typically hard hit during storms, had just 530 outages by Friday night.
With wires down just about everywhere, CMP took the opportunity to remind people again of the dangers of fallen lines.
“I can’t stress strongly enough how important it is for people to stay clear of any downed power lines,” said CMP spokesman John Carroll. “All lines should be considered live and dangerous and touching them could be deadly.”
On Deer Road in Lewiston, three trees toppled throughout the day. At about 4:30 p.m., one of them crashed down on the roof of a car while the owner looked on in horror from her living room window.
“There was a big crunch and then a bang,” said Sue Beland, whose 2004 Chrysler Sebring was crushed. “The car came up off the ground a good foot or two.”
“What ends up happening with severe winds like this is a little bit of everything,” said Lewiston police Lt. Tom Avery. “Traffic lights go out, trees are down and power is out all over the place. That can create a risk of accidents, business alarms go off and other types of things keep us busy.”
Outside the police department Friday afternoon, a 45-foot flag pole succumbed to a wind gust and blew over. It snapped at the base and landed at a slant, partially propped up by a tree.
Nobody was hurt when the pole went down and city crews quickly hauled it away.
On Perkins Ridge Road in Auburn, a utility pole was snapped in half by a gust at about 4:30 p.m. and it toppled across the road. Traffic lights in that city were out, too, but long after the commuter hour was over, there had been no serious crashes.
In the Twin Cities area, it was gusty all day, but the highest wind spike was measured at 39 mph. In some areas, the wind was more ferocious. By Friday night, the fiercest gust had been measured at 70 mph, at about 4 p.m. in Cape Elizabeth. Gusts of 60 mph were recorded in Westbrook and Bath while Gray recorded a wind spike of 63 mph.
The winds were mighty into the night but for some, it’s all a matter of perspective. On Mount Washington in New Hampshire, winds were sustained at around 120 mph throughout the day and a gust of 137 mph was recorded by early evening.
One weather observer had just stepped outside Friday afternoon when lightening cracked from a cloud and struck the Cog Railroad tracks.
“He quickly ducked back inside,” said Tim Markle, the chief observer on the mountain. “There aren’t too many places to protect yourself when you’re on top of New England’s highest peak.”
By 9 p.m., winds on Mount Washington had eased down to 110 mph gusts, Markle said.
Closer to sea level, it was dark across Lewiston late Friday night after power crews shut down streetlights as they made repairs to a transformer on Montello Street.
A section of Pine Street, near Bartlett Street remained blocked to traffic in the early evening, and fire crews were closing down sections of Pond Road later in the night.
On outer Main Street in Lewiston, a blue tarp blew across the road and landed on the windshield of a car being driven through late day traffic. The woman driving the car, blinded by the tarp, was able to pull safely to the side of the road and remove it.
The good news Friday night was that winds were expected to subside by Saturday morning. The bad news: forecasters say temperatures will dip town to near zero in coming days.
Mary Delamater, Sun Journal staff editor, contributed to this report.
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