Officials scramble to document flooding along the Kennebec River in central Maine as power outages and impacts persist

Gardner Public Works crews were clearing debris from the Maine Avenue Bridge Thursday morning, including food apparently washed away from the closed Hannaford store across the street, which was flooded by the Kennebec River.

Nearby, Greg Stewart and his son Alex rushed to document how bad the conditions were when the water reached its peak, as part of efforts to prepare for more catastrophic flooding in the future .

Stewart, chief of the hydrologic monitoring division at the U.S. Geological Survey’s New England Water Science Center, was on vacation this week when he and other U.S. Geological Survey staff received an emergency assignment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Their orders were to mark and record as accurately as possible how high the floodwaters were at numerous data points along Maine’s flood waterways.

“These are what we call critical perishable data,” Greg Stewart said Thursday as he marked flood lines on the Kennebec River in Augusta, Farmingdale, Hallowell and Gardner. Once it’s gone, you can’t get it again. Three weeks or a month from now, you can’t go back and find these marks. If you can’t do that, it has no value.

Thousands of Mainers are still suffering from the effects of Monday’s Mammoth Storm, despite the Stewarts’ efforts Thursday to document the worst flooding in Maine’s history since 1987.

As of Thursday evening, about 65,000 of Central Maine Power’s 674,000 customers remained without power. Of those, about 24,900 outages remain among Kennebec County’s customer base of 74,000. Nearly 500,000 customers were temporarily without power as storms battered Maine over the past three days, bringing gusty winds and 3 to 5 inches of rain to most local communities.

Flooding from the Kennebec River peaked Tuesday into Wednesday, devastating low-lying areas in the region.

The Kennebec River in Augusta reached 26.92 feet at 7:42 p.m. Tuesday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey website. The Kennebec River was at just 3.78 feet before the water started rising at 1:54 a.m. Monday. This means the river rose 23.14 feet over the two days. By 5:24 pm Thursday, the water level had receded to 11.92 feet.

Water levels in the Androscoggin River are also near record highs. The Androscoggin reached an altitude of 20.27 feet at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to the USGS. At 12:15 a.m. Monday, before the water began to rise, the river was only 6.51 feet high.By 4:45 p.m. Thursday, the water level had receded to 12.02 feet

Mark flood lines

The Stewarts’ effort Thursday morning is aimed at providing information that will be used to inform community decision-making and planning, emergency preparedness and a range of other activities compared to past flooding events, such as the massive 1987 flood. . Use intended to protect life and property.

But good planning and preparation cannot happen without good data. That’s why the Stewarts, along with nine other two-person U.S. Geological Survey workers, were out this week checking river flow gauges and following riverbanks, looking for the often faint lines left by trees, rocks, buildings and other riverbank surfaces as they pass by To the trained eye, the silt and debris showed just how high the water levels were at the height of the flooding. And these visible flood lines don’t last long, so there’s an urgent need to find them once the water recedes to a point where it’s safe to reach.

This data can help determine what changes should be made in building codes to help communities become more resilient, where evacuation routes should be, where bridges should be and how high they should be, and help predict future flooding and flooding severity.

Crews marked high-water marks with marking tape and USGS-tagged disks at many locations where flood lines were recorded after the 1987 flood, and took photos of each location and affixed signs with descriptors, to help investigators find them. Once all sites are marked, surveyors will record the marks with GPS coordinates over several months. Stewart said it now takes a long time to document them before they disappear, so now they mark the sites to be recorded and documented later by investigators.

Current markers are loaded into the USGS’ Short-Term Network (STN), and photos of each marker are designed to help locate these sites again in the future.

The data collected will be used to analyze FEMA flood insurance maps to check their effectiveness. If they display a flood insurance map that is used to guide planning nationwide, the map can be modified to reflect the updated data. Stewart said rivers change over time, either themselves or due to changes caused by humans, such as building new bridges or other structures, which can affect how the water flows.

Stewart said the latest flood appears to be a one-in-25 to 50-year flood, down from the 1987 flood that was considered a one-in-100-year flood. He said that the so-called 100-year flood is because the probability of it happening within a year is 1%. Or, if you convert the percentage to years, every 100 years. He said a 25- to 50-year flood, such as the one that just occurred, has a 2-4 percent chance of occurring in a given year, but it is still very rare.

This flood is unique in that it involves both rain and snowmelt, combined with unseasonably high temperatures, which are unusual for this time of year but more common during the typically warmer spring months. The snow was flooded by rainwater and turned into liquid, Stewart said, and the melted snow mixed with rainwater and filled some tributaries that lead to the Kennebec River and other Maine rivers.

Winthrop resident Stewart said snow (melt) is a big factor, usually in the spring. Not only is this a lot of rain and snow, but it’s also very, very warm.

Stewart said water levels behind Bingham Wyman Dam on the Kennebec River are high because more water is being held back for power generation this time of year. When the storm occurs, water is released, causing more and more water to flood the river banks and enter buildings in several Kennebec River communities along its path.

To determine how high the water was along the way, Greg Stewart, accompanied by his son Alex, a senior civil engineering major at the University of Maine who volunteered to help Thursday, first looked for lines of silt and debris, then Evidence to confirm that this is where the water reaches and not just clutter. This evidence includes whether the grass is straight or flat, whether the leaves are loose or wrapped around the grass or branches, and other indicators invisible to the untrained eye.

U.S. Geological Survey field crews are expected to be out Dec. 20-23 and Dec. 26-30, looking for evidence to tell scientists and communities how high floodwaters reached during heavy rains that battered much of the East Coast .

They also check river flow gauges, including those in Sydney, Augusta and Gardner, which track water heights throughout the storm, providing updates every 15 minutes.

Preliminary data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows the ongoing flooding could be the second-worst on record in the states.

local damage

Meanwhile, severe flooding damage was reported in several areas of Somerset County, Somerset County Emergency Management Director Mike Smith said.

Smith said Mercer, Anson, Solon and Karatuk appeared to be hit the hardest. Areas of Fairfield near the Kennebec River were also evacuated Tuesday as the Kennebec River rose.

In Anson, where the Calabasset and Kennebec rivers meet, firefighters had to use canoes to rescue residents trapped in homes due to flooding, Smith said.

Someone actually came out of the window, Smith said. They feel like their house is sinking. They ended up being quarantined there.

Smith also helped the town of Norridgewalk coordinate the establishment of an emergency shelter with the Red Cross.

“We try to localize every emergency,” he said. When that limit is exceeded, we become a conduit to get those cities the resources they need.

In Farmingdale, officials had to rescue a 79-year-old man from his car who was trapped in at least 4 feet of water that had rushed from the Kennebec River to Main Street.

Farmingdales Assistant Fire Chief Mike LaPlante said the man drove through a flooded area of ​​Main Street on Tuesday and became stranded near Martins Barber Shop around 4:30 p.m. About half an hour later, the situation is now stable.

LaPlante said the Kennebec Masonic Lodge provided the volunteer fire department with a small rescue boat to use in tight, tight waters, and LaPlante used the boat to extricate the man from the car. LaPlante estimated the man sat down with water up to his neck and was waiting for rescue.

With Gardiner Hannaford’s parking lot still flooded and inaccessible by canoe, residents may have to wait weeks before it can reopen.

Crews trying to survey the damage to the store Thursday morning found canned and boxed goods scattered around the aisles, a mess that could take weeks to clean up, and damage to the store from high flooding.

Chris Hughes, a part-time deli employee at Gardiner Hannaford’s Deli, posted a message on Facebook spreading the word about Hannaford’s management team, which said it was The timing of reopening cannot be estimated until store structures and equipment are evaluated.

In the meantime, management told store employees they can continue working at other locations in central Maine. Nearby Hannaford stores are located at 118 Coney Street in Augusta, 29 Wheaton Road in Augusta and 399 Main Street in Winthrop.

Morning News staff writer Jake Freudenberg and Kennebec Daily Times staff writer Emily Dugan also contributed reporting.

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