Thunderstorms, hail sweep across Maine Roof section torn off Augusta office building

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Powerful thunderstorms packing high winds swept across Maine late Tuesday afternoon, ripping off a 40-foot section of roof from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency building in Augusta, toppling trees and leaving thousands of Mainers without electricity elsewhere.

No one was hurt when the storm peeled back the roof from the two-story building that houses the Augusta field office of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, among other entities; the roof landed on three unmarked sedans used by drug agents, officials said.

The same storm toppled a tree outside the Blaine House, the governor’s mansion. Gov. John Baldacci was in his State House office across the street when the tree fell onto a fence and onto Capitol Street, said Dan Cashman, the governor’s spokesman.

A funnel cloud was sighted near Augusta, but it didn’t touch down, said Butch Roberts, meteorologist from the National Weather Service office in Gray.

From there, the storm picked up intensity as it moved Down East, knocking down trees and power lines in Castine and Deer Isle and dropping large hailstones in Dennysville in Washington County, said Vic Nouhan of the National Weather Service in Caribou.

Central Maine Power had more than 33,000 customers without electricity, and Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. reported more than 4,000 customers without power Tuesday evening, according to Bruce Fitzgerald, spokesman for the Maine Emergency Management Agency.

“The squall cut a wide swath from Augusta all the way to the coast,” said John Carroll, spokesman for Augusta-based CMP. “We’re still assessing the damage.”

State police reported several small fires caused by lightning, as well as toppled trees in the Augusta area and in the Castine and Blue Hill areas, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

Washington County

In Dennysville, where the National Weather Service received a report of 23/4-inch hail, Jessica Brown said she scrambled for cover after going outside to get the mail and to roll up windows on vehicles outside Coastal Oil, the company she owns.

Back inside, she saw hail the size of marbles raining down. “I heard it banging on my car. I’ve never seen it do that [before],” Brown said.

“It was brief, but it was enough to cover the deck,” said Dennysville resident Bonnie Smith. “It wasn’t golf-ball-sized like they said it might be, but it was still the worst that I’ve ever seen.

“It was like someone was hitting the windows with rocks.”

There was one fatality during the storm, a woman believed to be in her 40s who died in a single-car accident in Topsfield. The Washington County Sheriff’s Department went to the accident scene on Route 6 at 4:30 p.m.

The name of the victim and details of the accident were not immediately available.

Hancock County

In Somesville village on Mount Desert Island, an occupied car was smashed by a tree during the thunderstorm, but no one was hurt, according to police.

The two people inside the car climbed out on their own and didn’t require emergency assistance, dispatcher Rod O’Connor from the Mount Desert Police Department said. He did not have identification for the pair or information about the car, which was taken away by MDI Towing Co.

Strong winds caused the tree to topple over on Main Street in Somesville village, close to Port In A Storm Bookstore, O’Connor said. The incident triggered a long traffic jam as drivers waited for the scene to be cleared.

“It backed up traffic like crazy,” he said. “It was close to a mile.”

Emergency crews were kept busy all over the spread-out town of Mount Desert during the storm’s aftermath, as winds knocked over trees and power lines, according to the dispatcher. Most of the damage was confined to the villages of Northeast Harbor and Somesville.

“There were no reports of any lightning strikes,” O’Connor said.

Elsewhere on Mount Desert Island, officials from Acadia National Park reported that radio equipment on Cadillac Mountain may have been hit by lightning and that rangers were busy checking on overdue hikers as the fast-moving, violent storm moved in. No injuries or lost hikers were reported by Tuesday evening, according to Ranger Mike Wilson.

At 8:30 p.m., 4,000 Bangor Hydro customers were without power.

Waldo County

In Waldo County, Lori Mayer, 42, and her 15-year-old son, William Mayer, were sheltered in their ranch-style house in South Liberty looking out the windows as golf-ball-size hail pelted their home and strong winds uprooted trees.

“It was kind of crazy,” Mayer said. “First the power flickered, then the wind picked up, then these hail balls came down and we could see small trees being uprooted.”

Nancy Bartlett, 65, Mayer’s mother, thought a tornado might have touched down, noting that a large tree had fallen on a neighboring camp.

Penobscot County

Trees falling onto roads in Brewer and downed wires kept power company workers busy. Residents on more than 26 streets reported outages at 3 p.m. in the city, according to the Bangor Hydro Web site, including the East-West Industrial Park and Wilson Street.

Brewer fire reported two or three roads were closed because of the weather.

“It was nuts out there for a little while,” Brewer fire Capt. Gary Parent said.

No storm-related injuries were reported, he said.

Brewer police and fire were concerned about traffic lights being off on Wilson Street. Officers were sent to busy intersections to direct traffic for hours.

Few reports of personal damage were reported in Brewer. One of the incidents reported turned out to be minor.

Arthur Dearborn III of Holden came out of Rite Aid on Wilson Street to find his Nissan Quest van covered by a fallen tree.

“If I blame anybody, it is Mother Nature. It is one of those things you can’t control,” Dearborn said by phone Tuesday.

The maple tree damaged the van very little, he said. The hood of the car was scratched and the windshield had a small crack.

No one was inside the van or injured at the time of the incident.

In Glenburn, Dawn Fogg, who lives near Pushaw Lake, reported a bolt of lightning struck a birdhouse atop a 14-foot pole about 50 yards from her house.

“It blew our martin house to pieces,” she said.

A severe thunderstorm watch remained in effect until 8 p.m. Tuesday in all counties except Aroostook County, according to the governor’s office.

“I urge everyone to follow basic preparedness measures, including staying away from power lines,” Baldacci said in a statement released Tuesday evening.

Central Maine Power anticipated some service wouldn’t be restored until today, according to the governor’s statement.

Bangor Hydro did not return phone calls Tuesday evening.