WILLOW CREEK — The worst ice storm in living memory struck Willow Creek on the night of December 22, coating every tree, wire, and rooftop in a quarter-inch of clear ice and bringing down power lines across southern Aroostook County.
The town has been without electricity for three days.
The storm arrived without warning. Rain began falling at approximately 8:00 PM on Wednesday, December 22, and by midnight the temperature had dropped below freezing, coating every surface in ice. Power lines, burdened by the accumulated weight, began snapping under the strain. By dawn on December 23, the town was dark.
“I’ve never heard anything like it,” said Maeve O’Donnell, whose family has run the General Store for three generations. “Every few minutes you’d hear a crack like a gunshot as another limb came down. We stayed up all night listening to the trees break.”
The General Store stayed open by kerosene lamp, serving as a gathering point for neighbors checking on one another. Seamus O’Donnell, now in his seventies, dispensed coffee from a percolator heated on the woodstove.
“We’re not selling much,” he said. “But we’re not closing, either.”
The mill, which had shut down for the Christmas holiday, sustained damage to its roof from falling limbs. The planer escaped damage, but the drying kilns — which require electricity to maintain temperature — had to be emptied of their current charge to prevent the lumber from cracking.
The Gazette’s Christmas edition, already typeset and ready for the press, could not be printed. The edition will now run on December 30 — the first delayed publication in the paper’s history since the blizzard of 1892.
“Some families will receive their Christmas news after Christmas itself,” Editor Whitcomb wrote. “But the news is not the gift. The community is.”
Power is expected to be restored by December 26, according to Bangor Hydro-Electric Company linemen working around the clock. Until then, Willow Creek is making do with woodstoves, kerosene lamps, and the long-tested resilience of a town that has been through worse.