MEXICO, Maine — Kelsey Wallace lost her power Monday. Still, she considers herself lucky.
"It's hard to watch people we know struggle," Wallace said.
Her business, Altered Ego Salon, still has power, so she is taking customers when she can. But many are canceling appointments because of the recent flooding that devastated the community.
Wallace knows this is the reason she is lucky. Basements flooded, property ruined, cars taken underwater. Two people from Mexico died in the flooding. They are among the four storm-related fatalities.
"The aftermath is really worse than seeing the actual event," she said. "It's like a ghost town."
But Wallace and the other women running the salon are stepping in, using their building to accept donations and bring them to the warming shelters at the end of the day.
"It's crazy to think what's been lost," Wallace said.
And in the town with just over 2,000 people, everyone knows everyone.
It was a quick call from Wallace to MJ's Home Inspections, which was running a warming shelter. The owners brought us in and showed us the donations they were accepting, some from the Salon.
"It was crazy and a lot of confusion, a lot of being in awe of the damage that was done to the community that I have grown to love," Brittany McQuinn said.
McQuinn was staying at the warming shelter behind MJ's and said she has been without power for four days.
"It was devastating to see so many people without power losing things, losing parts of their homes right before Christmas," McQuinn said.
And while people like McQuinn seek shelter as temperatures, once in the 50s on Monday, were now in the low 20s, mutual aid from around Oxford County has been working to help people get flood water out of basements.
"It's as worse as I've ever seen it," one firefighter from Roxbury said. "Now we're just trying to get people's power back on."
Life is slowly coming back together.
Off Main Street, line workers were repairing power lines. Construction vehicles were moving debris. And families were still together, thankful for the many places they could go to stay warm.