Christmas in jeopardy for some Mainers after storms knocked out power

Megan Michaud and her family of five lost power for three days after a powerful storm throttled her home state of Maine, and a new challenge is creeping up on her: It's almost time for Christmas.

“This morning, my second grader told me, ‘It’s five days until Christmas' and I told myself that can't be right,” said Michaud, 42, of Kennebunkport. “But it turns out the calendar keeps moving even when you're in the middle of something.”

Michaud has had to toss all of the family's food. She has not wrapped a single gift and hasn't been able to start prepping Christmas dinner because of the chaos the storm has unleashed in Maine. She spent three days heating her home with a gas fireplace, shuffling back and forth from her parents' house and waiting patiently for power before it was finally restored Wednesday afternoon.

The heavy pre-Christmas storm that hit Monday has brought dangerous flooding and widespread power outages to Maine. The aftermath of the storm has left hundreds of thousands in the dark, closed ski resorts, washed out roads, closed bridges and caused families to throw away spoiled holiday food.

In South Berwick, Jessica Hyland was relieved when her power finally snapped back on Wednesday morning. But she still had not been able to buy a Christmas tree and was far behind on holiday chores.

“I was on my way to mild to moderate hysteria,” she said.

About 89,000 customers of Central Maine Power -- the state's largest utility -- were still without electricity as of Thursday morning. The company said in an update on its website that they are making "significant progress," having restored power to over 287,000 customers already.

"We expect to have the vast majority of customers restored by the end of the day Saturday," the utility said.

"Power is being restored as quickly as possible," Gov. Janet Mills said Thursday. "I know that the utilities are working very hard to get people's power back on. We want to make sure they get power as quickly as possible to stay warm during these nights that are getting colder, and hopefully everyone's power will be restored for the holiday on Monday."

"Maine people are strong," she added. "We're going to get through this."

People across the state are still cleaning up after the storm brought damaging winds and dumped torrential rains, flooding some rivers in the region.

“Now there's a lot of debris to clean up,” said Ellen Briggs, of Portland, who had a 60-foot white pine collapse in her yard.

At least three people in Maine died as a result of the storm.

On Wednesday morning, a 61-year-old woman was found dead inside a truck that had been swept away Monday night and overturned while trying to cross the flooded Swift River in Mexico, Maine. A 20-year-old woman remained missing, authorities said.

Also Wednesday morning, nine people, including a 2-year-old child, were rescued along the swollen Crooked River in the Naples and Casco area.

Mills said water levels are expected to drop in the coming days but they remain dangerously high and posed a serious risk in many parts of the state. The Kennebec River, which runs through Augusta, and the Sandy, Swift, Carrabassett and Androscoggin rivers were all seeing higher water levels than typical, leading to damage and closures, the Maine Department of Transportation said.

The governor continues to urge people in heavily impacted areas to avoid travel. It was a tough blow just before the holiday, she said.

“It can't be ignored that this storm arrives just a few days before Christmas, a time of joy," Mills said Wednesday. “For many in Maine that may no longer be the case. People dealing with the loss of their homes and damage to property.”

Mills visited Skowhegan on Thursday to survey flood damage at the Spinning Mill, a former yarn mill that is being redeveloped into apartments, workforce house, a hotel and a brewery. Flood waters from Monday's storm filled the basement of the mills, causing about $3 million in damage that is expected to delay the redevelopment effort by an estimated three months.

Mills has declared a civil state of emergency for most of Maine, noting the storm had “caused significant flooding and infrastructure damage, including to the state’s federal-aid highways.”

It is the kind of weather event that is becoming ”the new norm" in Maine in the era of climate change and more severe storms, said Pete Rogers, director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency.

“I think we're going to see multihazard events,” Rogers said. “They come out very fast, they come out very strong. Coastal flooding, beach erosion.”

Several ski resorts in Maine that were forced to close due to flooding announced they were cleaning up and planning to reopen in the coming days.

Officials at Sugarloaf Mountain said they were cleaning up Wednesday and planned to open Thursday. At Sunday River ski resort in western Maine, officials said they planned to reopen Saturday. A third resort, Saddleback in Rangeley, Maine, was also forced to closed and planned to reopen Friday.

Most of the resorts were still assessing the damage. But it was clear they were hit hard. A road leading to Sunday River Grand Summit Hotel and Conference Center washed out Monday afternoon after a brook running alongside the resort burst its banks. The Gould Academy competition center there also was filled with several feet of mud and ice.

Dirk Gouwens, executive director of Ski Maine, a nonprofit that represents ski interests in the state, said all of the 19 ski areas in the state closed or chose not to open due to the floods. The reason was not due to damage to the resorts but because access on roads to many ski areas was hampered.

“Most of the damage was done to the road infrastructure around the state, mostly due to culverts washing out, rivers overflowing their banks,” Gouwens said. “The main issue is access and getting around the state. There are still tons of roads that are closed.”