Hurricane Sandy spared Wiscasset and its neighbors the worst of her wrath, leaving most people with their power intact and some area fire departments with little or nothing to do.

“We lucked out,” Edgecomb Fire Chief Roy Potter said October 30. His department was never paged out for anything when Sandy’s winds and rains reached Maine Monday afternoon and night.

Neither was the Alna Fire Department, Alna Fire Chief Mike Trask said.

“We really dodged the bullet on this storm,” concurred Lincoln County EMA Director Todd Hartung, after being at the Communications Center until 3 a.m. and back in the office before 8 a.m. on October 30.

Dresden firefighters saw some action early evening on October 29. They removed downed trees in two different locations on Middle Road. Dresden firefighters also assisted Woolwich the night of October 29, tending to a downed tree on Colby Road while Woolwich’s fire department was on another call.

According to Hartung, the county had several local Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs) opened throughout the night that was prepared to respond to the emergencies as they occurred.

“We were very fortunate there were no major event(s), no evacuations required, and no requests for shelters throughout the storm,” Hartung said. “We had to deal with power outages, and fallen trees. Believe me, it could have been a lot worse. I do not believe the storm was as bad as we had anticipated it would be, and that is a good thing.”

Hartung credits the efforts of Central Maine Power Company, not only during the storm for taking care of the outages as quickly as they did, but for the work they had done earlier this summer by trimming the trees that were near power lines.

County communications calls

Lincoln County Communications Center received 30 calls Monday evening during the storm. Most of the calls were reporting trees down and power outages.

Bremen and Bristol appeared to be hit the hardest. On the afternoon of October 30, 559 of 644 Bremen CMP customers were without power. Of Bristol's 2,863 there were still 813 customers without power.

As of Tuesday, Oct. 30, at 12:40 p.m., there were 4,516 customers without power in Lincoln County. 40 in Wiscasset; 606 in Boothbay; 439 in Boothbay Harbor; 449 in Southport; 9 in Alna; 154 in Westport Island; 30 in Edgecomb and 53 in Dresden.

The entire town of Dresden went out at one point the evening of October 29, possibly due to an occurrence in another town, according to Dresden Fire Chief Gerald Lilly.

Woolwich also still had problems the morning of October 30. Of the town’s 1,606 CMP customers, 154, including all of Phipps Point and Montsweag roads, were without power. At the same time, 25 of CMP’s 2,250 Wiscasset customers, 150 out of 599 Westport customers, and 9 of the company’s 377 customers in Alna, were all without power.

An observer in Bath reported Maine’s biggest wind gust from Sandy. The gust measured 76 miles per hour, said meteorologist Tom Hawley of the National Weather Service’s Gray office. Hawley said the biggest gust at the Wiscasset Airport from Sandy was one measuring 44 miles per hour and that one of the biggest gusts nearby measured 58 miles an hour in South Bristol.

According to Hawley, Sandy’s remnants, featuring less severe winds, some showers and the chance of thunderstorms, will be lingering over Maine until Friday, Nov. 2.

Reflecting on the scattered outages in this area, the meteorologist said that if Sandy’s strongest winds had come this far north, “It would have been quite a bit worse.”

 Severe thunderstorm warning

After recovering from a night of high winds and rain from Sandy, the National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning Tuesday morning regarding a line of strong thunderstorms that would impact Lincoln County through 11:45 a.m. October 30. The thunderstorm came through Wiscasset with heavy heavy rain, loud thunder and lightning.

After Sandy passed, the National Weather Service had warned a line of thunderstorms could produce a tornado and hail up to 3/4 inch in diameter. However, Wiscasset saw none of that and thus dodged the bullet once again.