Read more about Jan. 10, 1998, in the SunJournal.com archives.

100 Years Ago: 1923

At the all-day meeting of Wales grange next Saturday, the officers for 1923 will be installed by E.E. Additon of Auburn. A harvest dinner will be served in the evening and a public whist dinner will be held. After a whist party was held Miss Lottie Greenwood and Fred Wood received the first prizes.

50 Years Ago: 1973

The first family to take up residence in the newly leased housing project in Auburn moved into its completed quarters Tuesday afternoon that started the virtual completion of a project that started only last June. Mrs. Leta West, with the assistance of her family, unloads a truck carrying family processions to move into the four bedrooms at the Stevens Mills Road project. A total of 20 units of housing in two, three- and four-unit bedrooms are in this project. Additional families will be moving in shortly according to Harry Woodard, Jr., executive director of the Auburn Housing Authority. This leased housing project is one of the fastest, from start to completion in the Central Maine area.

25 Years Ago: 1998

As the state’s worst ice storm in decades slid into its third day Friday, more than a quarter of a million Maine homes and businesses were without power.

Residents struggling without heat, electricity or hot water were flocking to what stores were open to stock up on provisions and to fill fuel tanks in their cars and trucks. “They’re buying everything: gas, water, beer, cigarettes, you name it,” said Leanne at the Big Apple Convenience store on Main Street in Lewiston. It’s likely to get worse before it gets better. “It’s incredible; my store is wiped out.” Flashlights and batteries also were big sellers as area residents came to the notion that electricity may be out for days to come.

At 4 pm Friday, 255,000 CMP customers in central and southern Maine were without power. Power in a few neighborhoods in scattered locations was restored as crews from Maine were joined by others from Massachusetts and farther south to clean up and make repairs.

“This is the largest outage we’ve ever had and until the forces of nature clean the trees up the threat could remain for a week or more,” said Mark Ishkanian, Central Maine Power spokesman. “This is a once-in-a- life-time storm.”

In just about all of central Maine towns Friday fallen tree limbs littered the sides of roads or sagged under the weight of ice in wooded areas, limbs cracked like rifle fire as they crashed to the ground throughout the day. The trees and limbs were taking down power lines as they crashed, shorting service and transformers and often blocking roads. The road closures made it that much more difficult for crews to reach felled lines.

Generally they will try to make the most repairs that will bring the most people back on, said Clark Irwin of CMP. They were assigning some priority; at one point we had eight hospitals working under generators.

The material used in Looking Back is produced exactly as it originally appeared although misspellings and errors may be corrected.