Staff Writer 

On Monday, South Portland City Manager James Gailey said the only houses without power in the city had had power meters torn off by ice buildup from last week’s ice storm.

“It was quite an end of the week,” he said. “We all did a tremendous job of putting the skills we have all been trained for through homeland security in to action.”

Public Works Director Dave Gaudet said the storm began for his crews as early as Wednesday night, when trucks had to salt roads due a small rainstorm. 

“We don’t have secondary crews but we try to give the guys a couple hours sleep,” he said. “We wind up working all different kinds of hours.”

Gaudet said Central Maine Power warned Fire Chief Kevin Guimond, Gailey and other city officials the city could go without power for more than 24 hours during a joint meeting with in the early parts of the storm, spurring them to open the community center as a shelter for residents in Cape Elizabeth and South Portland who would be without heat. The shelter was later moved to the Cape Elizabeth Fire Department and closed Monday morning. Gailey said “quite a few” residents spent the night at the shelter while it was open, despite Councilor Jim Soule’s reports the media had informed the public it was only a “warming center.”

“The press really got that wrong,” Soule said. “I think we need to work out some of the kinks with local notices.”

Soule said he would have also liked to see a greater effort to keep Sawyer Street, “one of the three major thoroughfares” of the city open during storms. Gaudet said public works crews had difficulty accessing the road due to a large amount of downed power lines. 

South Portland wasn’t the only municipality struggling to keep roadways open during the storm, as Cape Elizabeth Public Works Director Robert Malley said sections of Sawyer Road, Mitchell Road and Route 77 were all closed at different points. While he couldn’t recall what day, Malley said Route 77 was shut down in the early morning hours. 

“We could have had a real problem if it was during commuter hours,” he said. 

Malley said he believed Central Maine Power had restored electricity to the town by Tuesday, nearly five days after the ice storm began. Unlike South Portland, Gaudet said town public works crews were collecting any storm debris left on the side of the road. The additional cost in fuel and manpower were insignificant to upholding the expectations of the department, he said. 

“People were putting it there expecting us to pick it up,” Gaudet said. “You do what’s right to do. We have to believe we’re here to provide a service. Some people don’t have the means to get rid of that kind of stuff, and we do have a history of doing it after a big storm.”

Gaudet said debris will be ground up by a contractor who will most likely sell the wood chips to a bio-mass plant where they will be incinerated.