Maine Crime Writers

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today recounting a recent experience with life in rural Maine. What local weather forecasters call “wind gusts” that may “cause damage and loss of power” were predicted for Thursday, July 16., a little over two weeks ago. Boy, did they! I can’t say if what we had was a micro-burst or just wind gusts, but there sure was a lot of debris left behind.

It was just after 1PM and I was absorbed in writing an email on my PC, hearing aids out so I could concentrate, when high winds blew through a good portion of the state. For a time, hundreds of thousands of CMP and Versant customers were without electricity (and in many cases also without water, cable, and landlines—yes, a lot of us still use those), including the entire town of Wilton, where I live. Here at chez Emerson, a branch fell on the power line that runs from the pole across U. S. Rt. 2 to our house.

More about that later. Just after I sent my email, my husband (Sandy) came into my office to inform me that we’d just lost two trees. I hadn’t even been aware that it was windy. We went dark a couple of minutes later.

One of our lost trees was a maple that had dark leaves instead of green and was quite pretty. It was already at least ten feet tall when we moved in here in 1976. Unfortunately, I have no good photos of how it looked in full leaf before it went down. but you can see a branch in this one.

Judging by the backed-up traffic, there was a tree down farther along Rt. 2 toward East Dixfield village (one of the villages that make up the town of Wilton). Sandy went to investigate and yes, there was a tree lying across the road. There was also a wide load stopped just on the other side—a gigantic blade on its way to a nearby wind farm.

Our property is mostly wooded. Near the house we lost ten poplars. Our across the street neighbor lost trees too, and the awning on the front of his house was ripped partway off. Sandy also discovered that the cable for our phone, tv, and WiFi, attached to the Central Maine Power pole, had broken off and was lying on our lawn.

It could have been worse. No trees landed on the house. No branches broke windows. The roof did not blow off. But there was still that branch on the power line. A couple of  hours later, traffic was moving freely again but the power was still out when the inevitable happened. A truck blew past at the speed limit (55), hooked the low-hanging power line, and not only ripped it free but also pulled our meter right off the house.

Like most Maine people, we are well-prepared for outages, although they usually occur in the winter. We had plenty of water available, both for drinking and for flushing. Plus, in a pinch, we can take the cover off the well and dip a bucket. We have a camp stove and a grill for cooking and propane canisters for both. An aside: If you use coffee pods, they work just fine in a camping coffee pot or a French press. Just peel the lid off and use the contents the same way you would ground coffee beans—much tastier than instant.

We also keep two fully charged boat batteries handy. When one is attached to a handy little device with places to plug in a lamp and a charger cord it provides the basics of light and communication. Our cell phones will also connect to the nearest tower when our WiFi is down, allowing us to stay in touch with the outside world. That’s how we learned that winds estimated to be traveling at about 40 mph took less than twenty minutes to knock out power to half the state.

We were able to contact CMP and Spectrum to report outages and call Hidden Hills Tree Service  to schedule an estimate on tree removal. We ate the most perishable food for supper, including, of course, all the ice cream. I switched from reading on my iPad to reading an actual print book and we went to bed early.

The next morning, Friday, did not start well. Sandy headed down cellar to fetch the camp stove to make coffee, tripped on the stairs in the dark, and took a tumble that left him with painful bruises on his shoulder and one hand. That was scary for us both, but we were grateful it wasn’t worse. Our garage doors run on electricity. Although they have pull-cord releases, it still takes muscle to manually lift one. I wouldn’t have been strong enough to do it and would not have been able to get to my car if it had been necessary to drive him to the hospital.

Coffee in hand, a check of the CMP webpage revealed that on our section of Rt. 2 power had been restored to all but one customer. We could have done without that claim to fame. The good news, however, was that downtown Wilton had power, so once Sandy had pushed up the garage door, we headed in the the Post Office and the local Food City, where we purchased bags of ice for the freezer and a cooler. At that point we had no idea how long the power would be out. In theory, it could be several more days.

That afternoon the tree guy came by to give us an estimate. If something had fallen on the house, insurance would have helped pay for tree removal, but no house damage meant no coverage. It’s a good thing we don’t spend money on foolish things like vacations. They promised to come the following week to clear everything away.

Our luck improved at 4:30 when a crew sent by CMP showed up. In just about two hours, they cut away a couple of branches that were hanging by a thread, replaced everything that was ripped out, and restored our electricity. After they left, Sandy reached a real person at Spectrum and was promised that a repairman would show up between one and two on Saturday. Meanwhile, we could once again cook, turn on lights, and flush, and I could connect my iPad to the hot spot on the cellphone to check email and post updates on Facebook while Sandy watched the Red Sox game on his iPad.

On Saturday the 18th, at just about 2PM, a Spectrum truck arrived. The repairman replaced the cable wire but he couldn’t attach it to the pole without a bucket truck. He sat in our driveway waiting for it until 3:30, when he was ordered to another job. He assured us that the bucket truck would show up sometime in the next 24 hours. This was, needless to say, disappointing, but not totally unexpected. To our surprise and delight, the truck appeared at 5:15 and by 5:45 all systems were go.

That just left the fallen trees to deal with. The next week, on Thursday, our tree guy called with fervent apologies, but removing trees that actually landed on houses and camps had to take priority over our situation. After he rescheduled for the following week, since the weather was good, with low humidity and temperatures in the 70s, Sandy decided to do some of the simpler clean up himself. We own two chain saws. Need I say more? Fortunately, he accepted that he’s 79 and paced himself accordingly, although I had to remind him to stay hydrated. He cleared away a lot of branches and pushed one tree to the side with his tractor so it would be easier to the tree guys to get at the other trees that were down. Let me just say we won’t have to worry about our supply of firewood for some time to come.

The photo above shows the poplars we had hauled away. We kept the branches to use for fuel in our wood stove next winter. There is actually enough for several heating seasons.

At 7:30 on Tuesday, July 28, tree removal began. The crew came back to finish up the next day, but an hour and a half in, their tractor broke down and they had to take it to Farmington (16 miles from here) to be repaired. The only thing left was the big tree next to the road, so we’d already seen a great improvement. It was Friday the 31st when they returned and by noon the job was complete. Except for the gaps where trees used to be you would never know what a mess things were just fifteen days earlier.

I know this has been a long post, but I want to add just one more paragraph to say that we know how lucky we were that the damage was light and the cleanup and restoration of services went so smoothly. What we experienced was nothing compared to what folks endure from hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters. We are fully aware of how fortunate we are to live in a part of the country where, despite climate change, even “wind gusts” are still rare.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.