MAINE, USA — Despite being less powerful than the record-breaking storms in January, Sunday's storm brought flooding and more damage to some of southern Maine's coastal communities still recovering from back-to-back storms two months ago.
Public works crews said Sunday's storm topped off what's already been a busy couple of months.
"Yesterday kind of sat me back in my chair and said, 'Pay attention. Mother Nature’s not done yet. We’re not through storm season,'" Carol Murray, the public works director for Wells, said. "We didn’t need it. That was just the nail in the coffin."
Since January, Wells has spent $500,000 in road repairs since January. On Monday, a crew was repairing Webhannet Drive after part of the road caved in. She said that project alone is $200,000.
"It's stretching our finances," she said. "The money is kind of flying out with no relief in sight, and a small town like Wells just can’t do that endlessly."
Up the coast in Old Orchard Beach, a public works crew was cleaning the town square after the water receded on Sunday afternoon.
"It just puts an extra workload we just don’t need right now," OOB Public Works Director Chris White said. "It's the overtime. It's working your regular shift then working a Saturday and then working a Sunday."
Luckily, this winter hasn't brought much snow, so crews have been able to focus their efforts on storm recovery.
"It's fortunate that they had a reasonable winter, because they’re going to be working to put things back together for a long time," Murray said.
Gov. Janet Mills sent a disaster declaration request to President Joe Biden, asking for help for some of Maine's coastal counties recover after the back-to-back January storms. Biden has not yet approved the request. Mills estimates the storms caused more than $70 million of damage to public infrastructure.
Biden approved a similar Major Disaster Declaration in January after the mid-December storm brought significant flooding and power outages to western and central Maine. The governor estimated that storm cost $20 million in damaged infrastructure.