Heavy rains, flooding soak region

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A powerful thunderstorm Friday deluged parts of eastern and central Maine with rain, flooding streets in Bangor, and lightning set a building in Veazie on fire. Numerous power outages were reported.

The storm, which formed in the early morning from several smaller storms, prompted flash flood warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings across several counties. Several inches of rain were reported in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties.

In Veazie, in Penobscot County, a lightning strike caused a fire in the utility room of Veazie Manor, a 12-unit apartment building on School Street, leaving all tenants temporarily homeless.

One female tenant in her late 30s told police she had been struck by lightning. She was examined by emergency medical responders, but refused to be transported to the hospital by ambulance. Veazie police Chief Mark Leonard said he was unsure of the extent of her injuries.

Six people inside the building smelled smoke coming from the utility room, which is located in the basement. When police and fire departments arrived, everyone inside the building had made it out safely, according to Leonard.

The fire broke out around 2:15 p.m., and the Old Town, Orono and Veazie Fire Departments assisted at the scene to create a team of about 20 firefighters.

Leonard, who was the first to respond to the fire, shut off two propane tanks that are attached to the utility room before firefighters arrived.

“Any time you deal with propane it’s a threat,” Leonard said.

The propane tanks were directly adjacent to the utility room, according to Lt. Scott Kigas of the Veazie Fire Department.

“That led to why we got down there so fast to put the fire out,” Kigas said. “It put a sense of urgency into it.”

Three firefighters remained inside the utility room after the blaze was stabilized in order to monitor the situation.

Additional firefighters supervised by Lt. Mike Azevedo of the Veazie Fire Department planned to monitor the building until midnight Friday. Power had not been restored to the building as of late Friday night.

Smoke and water damage to the utility room and to two apartment units above the room was extensive, according to Leonard.

Meanwhile, in Bangor, flooding at the intersection of the Burleigh Road and Broadway made travel difficult for many motorists.

Rainwater accumulated on the road on the corner near the Irving Mainway on Broadway, and flowed along the right lane on Broadway, flooding several other parking lots on the left side of the road.

Several cars attempting to enter and exit the Irving parking lot between 5 and 6 p.m. got stuck in an estimated 4-foot-deep hole which was filled with rainwater and not visible to motorists.

Jessica Pariseau of Bradford was trying to make a right turn onto the Burleigh Road from the parking lot when her 2001 Pontiac Grand Am “took a nose dive” into the hole, according to an Irving store clerk.

“Her car was in there up over the hood,” Rob Pariseau, Jessica’s father, said from the parking lot as he repeatedly tried to get the engine started. “All they’ve got to do is put a sign up warning people.”

Shortly after Pariseau’s car was towed out of the hole, a van attempting to leave the parking lot got stuck in the same place for a moment, but the driver was able to maneuver the vehicle and escape.

A Bangor woman entering the parking lot in her 2004 Mazda also drove into the large hole. She had help from her mother pushing the car out, but was unable to get it started due to water damage. The Mazda was towed from the lot by Union Street Towing.

An Irving store clerk confirmed that the lot has flooded in the past.

Bangor received about 2 inches of rain in the 12-hour period the storm spanned, although it was heaviest in the midafternoon between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., when about a quarter of an inch of rain fell, Derrick Weitlich, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou, said Friday evening.

Greenville received almost as much rain as Bangor, at 1.74 inches in the 12-hour period, although Abbot topped Bangor with a reported 2.07 inches of rain during that same period.

The heaviest punch of the storm appeared over during the evening, although Weitlich said scattered showers could linger.

“It looks like the system is going to push out tonight,” he said about 8 p.m. Friday. Temperatures were expected to rise on Saturday, reaching into the upper 80s in the Bangor area, with the prospect of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon.

The storm on Friday knocked out power in coastal and inland communities in southern and eastern Maine. It was worst in the Bangor area in the afternoon, when lightning knocked out power to an estimated 5,400 Bangor Hydro-Electric customers along the Broadway substation.

Spokesman Jen Brooker estimated that power was out for most customers for about 15 to 20 minutes, although power outages continued throughout the day.

By about 5 p.m. the number without power was reduced to about 200 customers, and by early evening fewer than 100 customers were without power, with most of those attributed to an incident unrelated to the storm. A tractor-trailer truck apparently hauling a crane took down some utility lines in Bradford.

While the outage numbers were subsiding in Bangor Hydro’s coverage area, they were on the rise in the southern and central section of the state served by Central Maine Power.

The outages started about 4:45 p.m. and by about 7:20 p.m. had peaked at nearly 16,700 customers, Kevin Howes, CMP communications center supervisor, said Friday evening. About 80 percent of the outages were in the Alfred service area in York County and the Bridgton and Brunswick service areas in Cumberland County.

The Bridgton area accounted for nearly 8,000 customers, Brunswick for about 2,000 customers, and 155 customers were without power in Rockland at the peak.

Howes said CMP workers were making headway and within half an hour of the reported peak outage, CMP had dropped its estimates to fewer than 14,000, although he acknowledged the storms were still going through the Brunswick and Rockland areas.

BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY KEVIN BENNETT

Veazie and Orono firefighters go door to door after lightning ignited a fire in a utility room at 1055 School St. in Veazie on Friday.