FEMA officials in Maine to survey storm damage

YORK, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- Two teams of Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to Maine survey the damage caused by a late February storm.

"The governor has requested that the federal government - FEMA - work with his people in looking at the damage to see whether it meets thresholds and whether or not he should request assistance from the federal government to cover some of the costs of this storm," said Dennis Pinkham, head of external affairs for FEMA.  "After gathering all this information, our people will work very closely with the state, county and local governments and then what they will do is combine a summary report and forward that to the governor to see what he wants to do."

The storm with hurricane force winds and heavy rains hit New England hard on February 25 and 26.  Over 100,000 Mainers lost power during the storm as numerous trees snapped taking down powerlines.  Some places saw as much as eight inches of rain over the course of the storm which caused flooding and washed out roads.

"It was probably over a three to four hour period that this occured on Thursday into Friday morning," said York Police Chief Doug Bracy.  "At one point we had 70 roads closed in town."

Chief Bracy is also York's EMA director.  He led a procession of county, state and federal officials on a tour of some of the town's hardest hit places, including Long Sands Beach, which saw part of its sea wall wash away in the pounding surf.

"If it is declared, it will be the eighth time in 5 years that the town of York has sustained a federally declared disaster," stated Bracy.  "Obviously budgets are tight at the state level, the county level and the town.  We were on a restricted budget as we were - all non-essential costs - we had put a freeze in place about two weeks ago, so obviously any kind of help we can get would be great."

The FEMA teams will document the damage they see and combine that information with reports from individual towns and counties.  That combined report will then be forwarded to the governor for him to decide if the state should seek federal disaster assistance.

"They will go around and look at the damage, look at the debris, estimate the amount of debris that there is here and see that the numbers that we have provided them, and the towns have provided to us, are going to hold up and that there is that level of damage," said York County EMA director Robert Bohlmann. 

Bohlmann says the amount of damage the state needs to meet the threshold for a disaster declaration is $1.7 million.  He estimates the damage and clean-up costs in York County alone is near $3 million.