Storm tears up trees, cuts power

Mon, 10/30/2017 - 6:15pm

Cindy Seigars slept through a stormy Sunday night and into a stormier Monday morning at home on Cross Road in Alna near the West Alna Road end. Then she woke when a transformer blew about an hour before sunrise.

When Seigars saw many of her trees had been uprooted and taken portions of the earth up with them, she said she couldn’t believe her eyes. She’s lived in Alna 17 years and had never seen anything like it, she said.

Those were the trees the family had kept when taking other trees out. They looked like the ones that would continue to do the best, she said. Besides destroying the trees, the storm tore several shingles from the home and left them scattered around the yard.

But Seigars, a member of the Alna Fire Department along with husband David Seigars, was looking on the bright side. “It’s all minor,” she said. They were OK and their neighbors were OK.

During the day Monday, Seigars minded the fire station on Route 218. The department, as always after the town or parts of it lose power, opened to residents for all their needs from cooking in the kitchen to filling water containers for home, taking a shower or charging electronic devices. The TV was on, too, in the meeting room where town meetings are held every March.

Other firefighters came and went, including Alna’s emergency management director and assistant fire chief Roger Whitney. He said it appeared locally and statewide to be the worst storm since the ice storm, in terms of impact. A 3 p.m. update he posted at the station reported 481,294 Maine power outages including Central Maine Power and Emera, and a restoration estimate of “probably days.”

At Twisted Iron Customs on Route 1 in Wiscasset, downed branches mostly covered an old vehicle on display; and one tree snapped and its two pieces formed a right angle, beside an antique pickup truck. In a phone interview, employee Megan Amaniera said she was back to work Tuesday after arriving Monday to find a debris-filled driveway and the sedan crushed. “It had the (business’s) name on it. You would see it every day, and it was gone,” she said. Several 1950s and 1960s vehicles on the lot also had dings or other damage from falling branches, Amaniera said.

Back at the Alna Fire Station Tuesday afternoon, Alna’s Trinity Pass came to get warm water so her family’s turtles could eat worms. Cold water is wrong for their systems, Pass explained.

Asked how she felt about the fire department opening the station, she said, “I think it’s awesome.”