Some of the damage caused to trees and power lines during Sunday’s snowstorm is “devastating” and comparable to that experienced during the state’s ice storm in 1998, Central Maine Power Co. officials said Wednesday.

Comparisons to the devastating storm of four years ago might seem a reach for those who never lost electricity or who lost power but got it back quickly this week. After all, more than 300,000 customers were left in the dark during the ’98 glazing, compared to 70,000 this week. The ’98 storm was blamed for the deaths of at least 12 people and more than $100 million in damage to the state. Three deaths have been tied to this week’s snowstorms of Sunday and Tuesday. Damage amounts have yet to be computed.

The echoes of ’98 might best be heard in the rumble of gasoline-powered generators many Mainers are using to get through the current outages while line crews work to repair fallen lines. As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, nearly 4,500 customers in Maine were still without power, according to utility officials.

Although CMP hoped to have the majority of its 2,900 customers still without power back on line by midnight Wednesday, several areas in the state’s midcoast region will remain without power into Thursday, officials said.

Approximately 1,500 Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. customers remained without power Wednesday evening, three days after the weekend storm dumped up to a foot of heavy, wet snow across Maine. Several new inches of snow that fell Tuesday night complicated restoration efforts, Hydro officials said Wednesday.

Still, Mainers in many areas were getting by.

In Amherst, the Amherst General Store was able to stay open despite losing power for 48 hours. The key was a power generator it used to keep the gas pumps going and the lights on, owner Ralph Jordan said.

“We were the only [store] in a 15-mile radius that sold gas,” Jordan said when asked how important it had been for his store to have a generator on hand. Power had been restored to the store for several hours Tuesday when fresh snow caused another outage. Electricity at the store was restored again at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Etta Perkins lives on the Range Road north of Blue Hill village and had been without power since Sunday. She was hopeful Wednesday afternoon.

“They’ve got power as close as the inn on Route 15. That’s just down from me, so I’m hoping we’ll have it back soon,” Perkins said.

Perkins has a generator that is operated for a few hours in the morning and a few hours at night in order to keep the freezers cold and the pipes from freezing, she said.

“It’s quiet here without the generator,” she said, “but I’m looking forward to hot showers and doing the laundry.”

At The Home Depot in Bangor, generators were one of several winter items flying off the shelves as people prepared to fight the piling snow.

Between Sunday and Wednesday the store sold 50 generators, 25 snowblowers and 350 to 400 roof rakes, manager Donnie Dyer said.

During extended power outages, a lot of people get by with a little help from their friends and neighbors as well as power generators.

That’s certainly been the case for Karl and Jean Webster of Brooksville. The Websters, longtime visitors to the Hancock County town who retired there in 1990, live near the end of the Jones Point Road which has been blocked by a large tree that came down during Sunday’s storm.

“It’s no big deal,” Karl Webster said Wednesday afternoon. “I have a generator. The real problem has been trying to get out and get food.”

That problem was solved Wednesday when a neighbor, Joe Meltreder, walked more than a mile to the Webster’s home bringing with him a bag of groceries.

“Just enough to tide us over for the next two or three days,” Webster said.

Another friend, Tom Pascal, loaded cans of gasoline onto a sled and pulled the load around the fallen tree and to the Websters to make sure they could keep the generator going.

Town officials have called regularly throughout the outage, and later Wednesday a group of teen-agers stopped by on snowmobiles, just to say ‘hi’ and also offering to bring more gasoline if and when the Websters need it.

“Brooksville is a great town,” Webster said. “We’ve got good friends and good neighbors. You couldn’t ask for more.”

But not everyone has a generator.

Peter deVries of Deer Isle was frustrated with the power company and concerned about the welfare of his animals. Power had been out at his Reach Road home since Sunday, and he worried that the 12 cows, two horses and 100 chickens soon would begin to suffer from the lack of water.

“We hauled what water we had, but now we’ve depleted our supply,” deVries said Wednesday.

Although the animals were not distressed yet, “they’re not happy, and I’m not happy,” he said.

All the other homes on the road had power already, deVries said, adding that he called the power company repeatedly.

“They say they’ll be here, but they don’t come,” he said. “They told me I should have bought a generator. I think that’s a little flip.”

By 3 p.m. Wednesday, CMP had reduced its outages from an original 60,000 to 2,300.

The majority of CMP’s outages were in the Bath-Brunswick area and the Rockland and Belfast areas. More than 80 line crews and tree crews, along with additional support crews, continued to work to restore power to those areas.

“While the bulk of the remaining customers are expected to have service back by midnight [Wednesday] some customers in the more isolated parts of South Thomaston, Cushing, St. George, Appleton and Hope will be without power into Thursday,” a CMP press release stated.

Supervisors at the company reported that extensive tree damage still needs to be removed from remote rights-of-way before service can be restored.

Line crews from Maine Public Service in Aroostook County and New Brunswick Power were assisting in Bangor Hydro’s power restoration effort.

NEWS reporters Rich Hewitt, Renee Ordway and Derek Breton contributed to this report.