“When you’re in a marathon, keep putting one foot in front of the other until you cross the finish line” was advice I was given in mid-January 1998, 10 days into what ended up being a 21-day, mid-winter power outage crisis.
A Central Maine Power lineman works to remove a limb from an icy power line in Augusta on Jan. 8, 1998, in the aftermath of the destructive ice storm. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal, File
I was attending a community dinner at our school for those residents still without power. Neighbors, friends and strangers were unfailingly kind, joking with me that I was the voice and face of the natural disaster crippling Maine; I was then the spokesperson for Central Maine Power. At the time, I was wondering where exactly that marathon finish line was.
An ice storm is a slow-motion disaster – it requires the right combination of moisture, below-freezing surface temperatures and a slow-moving weather system for several days to build damaging ice loads on trees and power lines. That rare meteorological combination first took hold over Quebec days before it did Maine; a thick accumulation of ice caused steel transmission towers to topple over like toy erector sets.
Watching those scenes of devastation on the national news, I told my wife that if these icing conditions persisted in Maine, we were going to be in for a world of trouble. Over the next couple of days, as the ice thickened and branches and trees came down, power blinked out for nearly three-quarters of Maine’s population.
CMP faced the massive task of rebuilding its transmission and distribution system in the middle of a continuing icing event followed by bitterly cold temperatures and short daylight hours. Outage reports came in from all over our service area during the first days of the storm. As soon as our crews would restore service in harsh conditions, the same lines would come down again as the accumulating ice caused more branches and trees to fall.
CMP began calling in tree and line crews from as far away as North Carolina to help clear debris and begin rebuilding the system. We were competing with other Canadian and northeastern U.S. utilities who also needed outside help to build back their power lines.
I was tasked with explaining to our customers just how we were repairing the electrical system. Fortunately, my three-person staff was up to the task of getting out frequent updates – usually four or five times daily on radio and TV. Unfortunately, we could not provide an answer to the one question most on our customers’ minds: How long until power was restored?
Our message was that we needed to repair transmission and major distribution lines before tackling local lines that fed homes and businesses. It was going to take time and lots of patience.
Early in the crisis, then-Gov. Angus King met in my office several mornings to discuss messaging. King was helpful in setting the public’s expectations, explaining that it was going to take many days to restore power and that Mainers were going to have to look out for each other in the meantime.
After 25 years, the strongest memory I have from those cold, exhausting days of January 1998 was the kindness of neighbors helping each other and utility crews working long hours in unbearable conditions to get the power on. Gov. King’s plea for Mainers to look out for one another was taken up with gusto throughout our state.
There were reports of people picking up the tab for line crews eating in local restaurants. L.L. Bean donated winter clothing to some out-of-state utility crews who weren’t equipped for the cold conditions. One Rhode Island utility crewman helping us said it best: “If our own customers were without power for two weeks in winter, we would need police protection as we did our work. Here, people were inviting us in to share a hot meal and a few minutes of Maine hospitality.”
Mainers’ willingness to look out for each other during the literal darkest of times stands out as a proud moment in our state’s history.
View the Press Herald’s extensive coverage of the 25th anniversary of the ice storm at pressherald.com/icestorm.
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