Winter storm causes massive power outages

HOULTON, Maine — More than 3,400 residents were without power for varying lengths of time last Tuesday and Wednesday when the first major snowstorm of the year blanketed southern Aroostook County.
    Maine Public Service, which provides electricity to Island Falls and areas south, as well as parts of Monticello and Bridgewater, said approximately 3,000 accounts were without power, on and off, throughout the night and most of the day Dec. 19 in central and southern Aroostook County.
According to Virginia Joles, senior communications specialist for MPS, outages were first reported in the Grindstone area at approximately 9 p.m. Dec. 18. Power in that area was restored at 11 p.m. Customers in the Island Falls area lost power around 4:30 a.m. Dec. 19, while additional outages were reported from Masardis, Ashland, Presque Isle and Easton.
As crews were working on those issues, numerous calls were reported between 4:30–6:30 a.m. in the Island Falls area, where a major transmission line was impacted by the wet, heavy snow, Joles said.
By 10 a.m. Dec. 19, power was restored to all areas south of Island Falls, with the exception of the Sherman area.
“At 11 a.m., 2,200 customers in the Island Falls area lost power for a second time,” Joles said. “The power was restored after approximately 80 minutes.”
By 3:30 p.m., crews were closing in on the outages in northern Maine. There were about 210 outages in Sherman, 110 in Oakfield, and the rest were scattered around Easton, Presque Isle, Monticello, Ashland and Bridgewater.
“Customers are reminded to stay clear of any fallen power lines or trees nearby touching them,” Joles said. “Crews will work as quickly as possible, while ensuring the safety of those in the area.”
MPS customers may report outages by calling 1-207-760-2300, or toll free 1-877-655-4448.
The Houlton Water Company also experienced outages. John Clark, general manager for HWC, said about 400 customers lost power at various times, starting at 4:30 a.m. Some of the outages lasted for as long as 16.5 hours. The most at any one time of customers who did not have power was 200 from 3:30-4:30 p.m. on Dec. 18. Service was fully restored by 7 p.m.
Clark said the reason for the outage was due to wet heavy snow on trees and branches making contact with distribution power lines. The Houlton area experienced approximately 14 inches of wet snow between 6 p.m. Dec. 18 to 6 p.m. Dec. 19.
Other sporadic outages continued to be reported on Thursday morning beginning at 4:30 a.m., but power was restored to those customers by 7 a.m.
Customers with Eastern Maine Electric Cooperative, which provides coverage to portions of Aroostook, Penobscot and Washington counties including Amity, Cary, Hammond Plantation, Hodgdon, parts of Houlton, Linneus, Ludlow, Monticello, New Limerick, Oakfield, Orient, Smyrna, Danforth, Patten, Mount Chase and Stacyville, were also reporting outages, some lasting for as long as 50 hours.
Eastern Maine Electric Cooperative (EMEC) expected to restore power to all of its members on Friday, completing nearly four days of repair work from a damaging storm of heavy wet snow. Charlie McAlpin, manager of communications and member services for EMEC, said Friday that crews had been working around the clock since the storm event, trying to restore power. And with another storm forecast for Friday afternoon, that work was given an extra priority.
“Crews are working aggressively throughout the affected systems and we expect to make some fast progress,” he said. “We don’t like any outages, but this one was especially tough with repair after repair needed. It’s frustrating for everybody.”
He said because so many customers were located in rural areas with dense tree cover, the outage was especially taxing on the work crew. McAlpin added the Bancroft and Wytopitlock areas were hit especially hard.
By mid-morning Friday, the consumer-owned utility had restored power to all but 400 homes and businesses, many of which are unoccupied during the winter.
All 12,600 of the cooperatives’ service customers were impacted by power outages at one point or another during the storm, but the worst damage affected approximately 4,000 individuals from Topsfield north to Monticello and west to Patten and Shin Pond.
In addition to its own workforce, the cooperative brought in seven additional tree trimming crews and four additional line crews to speed the repair process. In addition to restoring power, EMEC said the extra crews would help with preventative clearing of newly damaged trees that might otherwise cause outages in the high winds and freezing rain that were expected to arrive in eastern and northern Maine on Friday afternoon.
“Heavy, wet snow often seems peaceful, because it comes in so quietly,” said McAlpin. “Even so, it does some thorough damage, because every tree that can bend over and reach the power lines becomes a potential outage.  It may take dozens of repairs to restore power to as few as 100 people.”
Outages started shortly after 6 p.m. on Tuesday night in the cooperatives’ Patten and Shin Pond areas.  By Tuesday morning, linemen were battling outages across the EMEC’s system in northern Penobscot, southern Aroostook and Washington counties.
Rotating outages continued throughout Wednesday and Wednesday night, with linemen unable to stay ahead of the newly occurring damage. Complicating the repairs were numerous transmission line outages on the circuits feeding into EMEC’s system from New Brunswick in the south and Maine Public Service in the north.
Although significant progress was made Thursday, approximately 750 homes and buildings were still without power at daylight Friday morning. The largest clusters of homes without power Friday were in Sherman and Silver Ridge, but approximately 30 side streets and other clusters of homes were without power across northern Penobscot and Southern Aroostook counties.  EMEC expected to restore power to all of its customers by 5 p.m. Friday.
Eastern Maine Electric Co-op is a not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric utility serving 3,000 square miles of rural eastern and northern Maine.
Electricity was not the only issue as numerous telephone lines were ripped from homes.
Pioneer Broadband, which provides telephone and Internet service in Aroostook County, was also impacted by the storm, according to Tim McAfee, chief executive officer for the company.
“Most of our problems were electrical in nature,” McAfee said. “We have a lot of sites that depend on power, especially Ludlow, Amity and Orient. We ran about six portable generators overnight to keep service flowing.”
McAfee said snow and ice build up on its recently added line of fiber cable also posed challenges.
“We were able to take care of those lines before the cable could break,” he said.
That meant going out to inspect the cable lines, and in many cases knocking the ice from the line. Some of the sections of cable had sagged considerably due to the weight of the snow and ice.