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It has been an interesting week.
Many of you may have heard that in the late afternoon on Monday, the island was hit with a major thunderstorm. Not only did it drop an inch of rain in a matter of 15 or 20 minutes but the accompanying wind devastated the entire NW side of the island. The trees on the ground must number in the hundreds. There are 4 or 5 large areas, the largest maybe 2 acres, where every tree is flattened on the ground. The most tragic is the huge Ash tree in front of Hunting, it ended up lying across the road and filling Earl's driveway with branches, Gary measured the butt at 5' in diameter. Another large spruce broke off on the waterside of the Thomson (Charlie & Dot) house flipped over the roof house and landed with the broken stump end towards the road totally reversed from the direction you would expect it to land, the amazing thing is the roof on the road side doesn't have a scratch on it, I haven't looked at the other side but I suspect it is the same. As you might expect the roads to both the N Point and the S Point where completely blocked. It took nearly 20 people with a dozen chainsaws and 4 tractors almost 8 hours just to clear the roads enough so cars could pass. Unbelievable would describe the entire scene, no one on the Island can remember a storm like it. After seeing the mess it is hard to believe that no one was hurt and that no houses were seriously damaged. The worse I have seen is a tree through the roof of the Thompson's (Dave & Jean) boathouse and a few other sheds with trees on them, even the golf cart the was buried under a tree was able to drive away then the weight was lifted off it. The City sent down a barge full of equipment on the high tide, Tuesday afternoon just as we broke though the last pile of trees in front of Granlia and city crews have been clearing the lines and chipping since then. Power was restored to the main part of the island on Tuesday and today those of us without phones finally had them restored. Late this afternoon Central Maine Power brought down 3 barge loads of equipment so they could repair the electric lines. Only one pole was broken to the S Point, it happened to be the one that carries the underwater phone cable junction, and the primary was not broken so they where able to get a new pole in, the line restrung and the power on by 8:30 or so tonight. Their plan is to work thought the night, to get the 10 broken poles replaced to the N Point. Then bring in a line crew tomorrow and see if they can get power back to that end of the Island, the primary there is broken in a few places and they may just replace the whole thing. This is a much better schedule then what they where talking about yesterday, when the CMP guy thought it would be a week or more. The telephone cable to the N Point was also pretty beat up and they are talking about changing that as well. |
