BAR HARBOR, Maine — Iconic fishing shacks along a South Portland beach were destroyed in a Saturday storm that brought record flooding and high winds to coastal Maine for the second time this week.
Damage was heavy in the Portland area around the highest tide of the season around noon. Some of the biggest casualties were three fishing shacks that sat on Fisherman’s Point and had interior timbers that are more than 200 years old. They were washed away as the high tide came in around noon Saturday.
Large storm surges were pushed into the Gulf of Maine on Saturday, combining with the season’s highest tide at a full foot higher than the one observed during a similar event on Wednesday. This one could lead to potentially more damage due to eroded dunes.
Portland eclipsed a flooding record set in a famous 1978 blizzard, with waters rising above 14.5 feet in the harbor. The flooding inundated parts of the Old Port and the area around Back Cove. Both Interstate 295 exits onto Franklin Street were closed due to flooding there.
In downtown Bar Harbor, as high tide was cresting just before noon, waves rolling in from the east slammed into the shore facing Frenchman Bay and into the granite town pier. The swells sprayed up through the bottom of a wooden pier at the Harborside Hotel, lifting the planking and small buildings on the pier a few inches into the air.
Local resident Galen Lowe, who works on Lulu the Lobster Boat tour vessel in the summers, was out walking Saturday morning surveying the impact of the storm along the town’s waterfront. He said he’s been out in heavy weather before but he’s never seen the tide and surf so high right by the harbor.
“I’ve never seen the pier lifted up like that. Never,” he said of the Harborside pier, where Lulu picks up and drops off customers in the summer. “This destruction is unprecedented. It’s unbelievable.”
Though surrounded by the ocean, Mount Desert Island does not have as many low-lying areas that are vulnerable to storm surge as other parts of the state. But the combination of high tide, high water levels, and heavy waves — both on Wednesday and Saturday — has left its mark along the shore.
The famous Shore Path in downtown Bar Harbor suffered severe erosion in Wednesday’s storm, and was pummeled again on Saturday. Roads that skirt the ocean at Bracy Cove and Sewall have been buried twice by cobblestones thrown up by the surf.
Waves overwashing the pier in Seal Harbor have heavily damaged a bathroom and pulled another small building on pilings into the harbor in Bernard. In Northeast Harbor, some docks on Wednesday were thrown off their granite pilings and left angling steeply into the water to be roughed up again on Saturday.
The ruins of an old wooden cargo ship called Tay were exposed at Sand Beach in Acadia National Park on Wednesday, drawing heavy attention from park visitors over the past three days.
But on Saturday, after it wrecked and then drifted ashore more than 100 years ago, the spine and ribs that remained were washed out to sea by the subsequent storm, according to Bar Harbor Story.