Bangor mobile home shifts, drops > Rain-soaked ground suspected in near collapse of trailer in Holiday Park

BANGOR — Things that go bump in the night are a relatively common occurrence in life. Just ask anybody who has ever awakened in the wee hours of the morning after hearing an unexplained noise.

But for two Bangor women, something that went bump and woke them up at 4:15 a.m. Wednesday soon turned into something more. One hour after being awakened by a strange noise coming from beneath their mobile home, roommates Barbara Matthews and Pamela Healy got the scare of their lives when their trailer shifted more than two feet to the side and dropped almost a foot and a half downward.

The official cause of the shift has yet to be determined, pending investigations by two insurance companies. All those interviewed Wednesday, however, said rain-sopped grounds undoubtedly played a part in the near collapse of the mobile home, which is located on Maple Lane in the Holiday Park mobile home community on Essex Street.

Matthews said most people believe that water from Tuesday night’s rainstorm — which dropped 0.77 inches of water on Bangor, according to WLBZ-TV meteorologist Steve McKay — coupled with the snowstorms of the last week, have saturated and softened up the ground.

As the wet ground slowly gave way underneath the cement blocks supporting the trailer, the home began tilting to the side until the blocks could no longer hold the building’s weight.

“It could have been a lot worse,” said Matthews, 49. “It could have been like what happened down in Rockland.”

An erosion-induced mudslide along the Samoset Road in Rockland has caused two seaside homes to collapse into a giant hole on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Matthews said that she and Healy, 44, were both startled awake by a noise coming from underneath the mobile home early Wednesday.

“I thought it was a little animal or something that got stuck underneath,” Matthews said. “I figured it might be a skunk so I wasn’t about to go outside to check it out. I thought it could wait until morning.”

The noises continued for about an hour when suddenly the entire home shifted and dropped.

“It was just a big funny noise,” Matthews continued. “Then it was a slow shift and then a jolt. It gives you an awful feeling.”

Physical damage to the exterior of the trailer seemed limited to the collapse of the skirting, a telephone interface stand being bent over, and the oil tank being dented under the weight of the trailer.

Interior damage was minimal, limited to mostly upset bookcases and some broken drinking glasses. Most of the interior damage occurred when the shift knocked the piping underneath the trailer off kilter, spewing water from the toilet throughout the bathroom.

“We were lucky, though,” Matthews said. “Nobody got hurt.”

After the shift occurred, Matthews was concerned about possible electrical line problems and possible damage to the oil tank so she called the Bangor Fire Department.

“The mobile home fell off some of the blocking because the ground was so soft,” said Assistant Fire Chief Scott Bostock. “We checked the oil lines and the electricity and everything looked OK. That was about it.”

Later, Matthews called park manager Merle Goff, who looked over the damage and contacted the park’s insurance company as well as park owner Tom Walsh.

“That whole area is very soft [ground-wise],” Goff said. “I’m not an expert in this sort of thing. It looks like the water just ate away at those blocks and a gust of wind might have hit it. I think it was a combination of the two.”

Goff said he did not expect similiar occurrences in any other areas of the park.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Matthews still was waiting for her own insurance company to arrive on the scene, as well as the insurance company that represents Holiday Park.

“There’s really nothing else we can do right now,” Matthews said. “We’re waiting to see who’s going to be responsible.”

Later Wednesday, the Bangor Fire Department helped an Essex Street resident who lives across the street from the Holiday Park pump water out of a flooded cellar.

“If you look at the terrain out there, it’s like a little valley between two little hills,” Bostock said. “That ground is just saturated.”

At one point during her interview with a Bangor Daily News reporter, Matthews stepped in a soft spot and watched her foot sink close to four inches into the earth.