AUGUSTA — Central Maine communities were hit the hardest by a wind and rain storm Wednesday night that cut power to about 10,500 Central Maine Power Co. customers.

Electricity was cut to 7,410 customers in Franklin, Kennebec, Sagadahoc and Somerset counties.

By noon Thursday, however, service was restored to about half those affected and was expected to restore all service that night, according to power company spokeswoman Gail Rice in a news release about the outages.

“The winds were fairly substantial and took down a lot of trees,” said Art True, emergency planner at the Kennebec County Emergency Management Agency.

In Kennebec County, there were 3,198 reported outages overnight and 2,487 customers were without electricity at noon Thursday.

In Somerset County, there were 1,144 reported outages and 761 customers were without power at noon Thursday.

“We had a lot of trees and wires down, but we didn’t get a lot of reports of power outages,” said Somerset County Emergency Management dispatch supervisor Kelly McQuarrie.

In Franklin County, there were 1,166 reported outages and 595 customers without power at noon.

In Sagadahoc, there were 1,902 reported outages and 258 customers without power at noon.

In Waldo County, there were 447 reported outages and 161 customers without power at noon.

“It was a busy night, and our crews were out in full force to restore power to customers who lost service due to damage from this storm,” Rice said. “We expect to have service restored Wednesday afternoon to all but a few customers in the northern parts of our service area, and those final customers should have their service back by late evening.”

 

Rachel Ohm — 612-2368

rohm@mainetoday.com