York Town News
Patriot's Day storm causes millions in damage
By Jennifer L. Saunders and Melissa Wood
Beachcombers check out an enormous Coast Guard navigational buoy that was tossed ashore on Short Sands Beach during the Patriot's Day Nor'easter last week. Police have since cordoned off the buoy to be sure no one is injured by climbing on it, as it had become a temporary tourist attraction at the beach. Police said it will be removed, probably with a crane and a flatbed, by the Coast Guard at a future date.
Photo by Steve Rasche
York High School sophomore Allie Hayford stands beside a truck lade with some of the almost 200 pounds of garbage and debris collected on Phillips Cove beaches as Ocean Circuit Drive neighbors and their children helped clean the beach and marsh area in honor of Earth Day.
Courtesy photo
YORK AND OGUNQUIT - The preliminary estimates are in, and although the Patriot's Day Nor'easter did not decimate local communities to the degree of last year's Mother's Day flood, the price tag to fix the damage is expected to be in the millions.
When the York Board of Selectmen met on Monday, April 23, York Police Chief Douglas Bracy and Director of Public Works Bill Bray provided updates on the storm and an early estimate of about $2 million in damage to the town's roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure.
In Ogunquit, estimates of damages doubled from $225,000 last Friday to $450,000 on Monday for repairs to the Marginal Way, the dunes and a walkway to the beach from Shore Road to Wharf Lane.
Officials in both towns are working hard to make repairs before the summer season kicks off.
The first priority for York, Bracy explained, is to address significant damage to the seawall and sidewalks along Long Sands Beach. Bracy and Bray received a boost in that effort Monday evening when selectmen voted unanimously to authorize the town to use up to $100,000 from the supplemental contingency account to repair damage from the storm.
Voters approved the special fund last year and the selectmen and Town Manager Rob Yandow noted no funds have been spent and the account would have remained untouched if not for the damage from the storm.
The town will be working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Federal Highway Administration to address funding projects related to the storm and the astronomical high tides that accompanied it. The town funds will be used to address immediate priorities on an emergency basis, to be replaced once FHA or FEMA reimbursements are made available.
"We want to do it right," Bracy said earlier in the day on Monday. "If we get going now, I don't see any problem with getting these sidewalks done for the summer."
Bracy, Bray and Yandow have agreed to update the selectmen regularly on the repair work and how the funds are being spent.
Using photographs to illustrate the storm's impact on the town, Bracy showed the selectmen where areas with improved sidewalks along Long Beach Avenue survived the storm, and where improved culverts were able to handle the increased drainage while older roads and sidewalks crumbled.
"This was a long storm across three days, with high tides, road closures … trees down … coastal flooding that occurred every 12 hours," Bracy told the selectmen.
There are five- and six-foot chasms on Long Beach Avenue, Bracy said. Sea foam spattered and stained buildings. Roadways across town sustained damage. About seven feet of sand eroded from Short Sands Beach, exposing an ancient shipwreck. A navigational buoy was tossed like a toy upon the rocks at the beach. And, along portions of Shore Road, residents had no power for almost four days.
Despite all that, Bracy said, it could have been much worse.
"Surely we're very fortunate," he said. "…We could have been living the same nightmare we had last year."
In Ogunquit the powerful waves wiped out 10 feet of dunes and the entire snow fence that stretched well over a mile on the beach and was put in place to help restore the dunes.
"The dunes are fragile so they need care and maintenance," said Town Manager Phil Clark, who said the town was still uncovering problems over the weekend, causing its first damage estimate to double.
Those damaged areas also include the Marginal Way, hard hit by erosion and the loss of benches along the walkway, and a popular footpath on Wharf Way, which lost 40 feet and needs to be rebuilt. Clark said 1,000 people per day use the path in the summer as a shortcut to the beach.
Clark said he'd be meeting with already busy contractors to get bids for repairs. The town had planned improvements to the beach, including updating the beach bathrooms, repairing the parking lot and sidewalks at Main Beach and adding three new ramps, approved at the town election on April 7, and so the timeframe to make them and the repairs from the storm is already short.
"We've got to get it all ready by the end of May for the summer season," said Clark.
On York's Short Sands Beach, a Coast Guard navigational buoy that washed up has become something of a temporary tourist attraction in the area, but the York Police Department has had to cordon off the area because people had been climbing on it.
"We're concerned about children thinking it's a playground, and it's not," said Sgt. Thomas Baran. "If it moves, it could severely injure somebody."
York Police Chief Douglas Bracy agreed.
"It's a wonderful photo opp, but we didn't want anyone getting hurt on it," he said .
The bright red buoy perched on the rocks in front of the Fun-O-Rama has already been replaced by a new buoy at the mouth of the Cape Neddick River, visible from Short Sands Beach. A Coast Guard official said the new one was put into the water on Tuesday.
Bracy, who grew up in town, said the force of the Patriot's Day storm is illustrated in the buoy being tossed onto the rocks at Short Sands Beach.
"I only remember once before when the Cape Neddick Buoy broke loose and ended up on one of the beaches," he said.
The Coast Guard had not given police a date when the stranded buoy will be removed as of press time Tuesday.
Baran explained that it can only be removed by bringing a crane to the beach to lift it onto a truck or by airlifting it with a helicopter because of the buoy's size and weight.
Before the storm event was even over, police had many safety issues to contend with , including people ignoring traffic cones used to restrict flooded areas. Baran said there was a big problem with people moving traffic cones to access areas near the shore that were unsafe because of the high waters and rocks being thrown by the ocean onto the roadways.
"A police officer had to be at the location, otherwise people would disregard the traffic cones," said Baran.
He said one car even drove right through a set of cones without slowing down.
"That was probably one of the most frustrating parts," said Baran, who added that every high tide for three days created a problem for the department, which had to make sure that people didn't get too close to the water. "We're doing it for everybody's safety."
Baran said that disregarding the cones is a violation, and although the police did not charge anyone because they were so busy addressing other issues, they may rethink how to handle the problem next time.
"We're just looking for compliance," he said.
Baran said another problem with cars driving into the flooded areas was that they cause a wake in the water, posing a danger to businesses and residences that narrowly escaped being flooded by rising waters for a second year in a row.
As Bracy told the Board of Selectmen on Monday, "We were within a half-inch of losing all those business again. … If we had another two inches of rain, we would have never made it."
Bracy and the Board of Selectmen stressed the importance of the funding request on the May 19 ballot to begin to upgrade the drainage system for York Beach Village and protect those homes and business.
Board of Selectmen Chairman David Marshall expressed his appreciation for the many volunteers who came forward to help and said that, in spite of the damage that must now be addressed, the town is very thankful that this year's storm event did not match the destruction of the Mother's Day storm of 2006.
"Last Thursday, the Chamber of Commerce put out a call for help for volunteers to come down to Short Sands Park … I'd like to thank all those individuals who volunteered," said Town Manager Rob Yandow, adding special thanks to those who brought heavy equipment to move debris, including local businessmen Peter Hughes and Dave Woods as well as the York Sewer District. "They did a lot of good work."
"Everybody just pitched in and worked until the whole job was done. In about two hours that whole downtown was swept and cleaned and raked," said Greater York Region Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Cathy Goodwin.
Goodwin was there on Thursday to volunteer and, within minutes, cars poured in and people unloaded with between 30 and 40 volunteers participating.
"We encouraged families to go to the beach over the weekend and adopt a parking space and throw the rocks back," she said Monday, adding her appreciation for the Department of Public Works, Parks and Recreation and York police in what was "another community effort. … You would never know today that we were underwater last week."
Down the road in Ogunquit, Clark said the five employees of the Highway Department worked diligently to clean the beach and that the beach parking lots, strewn with debris from the storm, were looking pristine by Friday afternoon.
"The highway department did an outstanding job," said Clark.
Over the weekend, volunteers along York's Long Sands Beach were throwing back the rocks that littered the parking spaces, roadway and even yards as a result of the waves that battered the shore almost one week earlier.
Local Brownies were heading to York Harbor to help clean Harris Island while Ocean Circuit Drive neighbors in the area of Shore Road and Phillips Cover joined together to clean up the beaches and marsh area in celebration of Earth Day on Sunday, April 22, and just in time to help clear out the damage from the storm,
"We picked up almost 200 pounds of garbage," said Allie Hayford, a York High School sophomore, who helped clean her neighborhood beach in honor of Earth Day. "We picked up a lot of fishing debris such as ropes, buoys and mangled traps without tags. We also picked up a lot of cans, plastic and glass bottles and some really detrimental things like a big jug of motor oil."
"I can't thank people enough. We had a lot of people on Thursday for the cleanup and over the weekend on Long Beach," Bracy said of the many volunteers who have worked to clean up after the storm, adding, "You don't see that happening anywhere else, where the community comes out and helps the business community. We realize how much York Beach means to the town."
Hayford, for one, said she was happy to help, with or without the storm event as the impetus.
"Every Day is Earth Day," she said. "Maine has a beautiful coastline and I would love to see everyone take a proactive position in keeping our environment and beaches clean."
York EMA is looking to identify local permanent residents who have suffered home or business damage due to the recent flooding.
"It is very important that we identify as many homes and businesses as possible so that we can meet the FEMA threshold," Bracy explained. "This threshold will allow FEMA funding to be made available to anyone in the declared disaster zone."
If you have sustained damage to your primary residence or business, please contact the York Police Department at 363-1031.
