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01/07/2008

The answer, perhaps not surprisingly, is mostly yes but partly no.

A three-part series that started Sunday in the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal looks back on lessons learned during the storm, which left well over half of Maine residents without power. The series, on page A1 again today and Tuesday, asks if permanent improvements have been made. It asks what more needs to be done.

Here's what our reporters found:

n At a statewide level, officials feel much better prepared. All 50 states now have formal "mutual-aid agreements" when natural disasters strike. That means asking for and receiving out-of-state aid is easier to do. Local and statewide communications that suffered 10 years ago are said to be better now. County emergency-management officials say they are wiser about how devastating a sudden ice storm can be, how inches of ice can snap tree limbs like twigs, down thousands of power lines and close countless miles of roads.

n At the local level, there's more of a mixed bag. In Kennebec County, for example, only nine of 29 incorporated municipalities have stated officially that they have adequate power generators on hand should people be forced from freezing homes into the municipality's official emergency shelter.

That's a lesson that should have been learned by now. One of the first things that went "wrong" in 1998 was that local leaders went to open their emergency shelters, only to realize that power was out there, too, and in too many cases they had no back-up generators. Without power, the shelters had no heat. Without heat, they weren't really shelters.

n If warming trends continue, and we know how hard it is to "believe" in global warming with two feet of snow on the ground and sub-zero temperatures last week, ice storms are more likely to occur in Maine.

Several experts on climate said Maine's ice storm of 1998 would have been more "normal" in a mid-Atlantic state such as New York or Maryland, where winter temperatures routinely hover in the low 30s. Temperatures like that make freezing rain more likely; colder readings bring plain old snow.

Finally, our series includes many tales of "Mainers helping Mainers," and locals showing that New Englanders' classic resilience and stubbornness have their upsides.

It also points out how costly being fully prepared for another ice storm would be. Commercial generators needed to power large emergency shelters, for example, can cost as much as $100,000 apiece. Government solutions aren't always easy to find.

Still, this week's anniversary is a good time for the state, towns and central Maine families to check on their preparations and ask: What if this happened again next month? Are we ready?

If the Ice Storm of '98 taught us anything, it was that it's way too late to do something after the first inch of ice falls, the first big pine branch breaks, the first local power grid goes dark.

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