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Maine storms wash away iconic fishing shacks, expose long-buried 1911 shipwreck on beach
A record high tide in Maine washed away three historic fishing shacks that had stood since the 1800s and formed the backdrop of countless photographs. The dramatic incident, which was caught on video, happened just two days after a shipwreck from 1911 was exposed by another storm on a beach in Maine.
Michelle Erskine said she was visiting fisherman’s point at Willard Beach in South Portland on Saturday when she captured video footage of the last two wooden shacks sliding into the ocean.
“Oh no. They’re both going. Oh no!” she can be heard saying on the video.
Erskine, who has lived in South Portland all her life, said her son had his senior photos taken at the shacks and wedding parties often visited them.
“It’s truly a sad day for the community and the residents of South Portland,” Erskine said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday. “History is just being washed away.”
The shacks, owned by the city of South Portland, had just undergone a facelift in October when they were repainted.
They were the last in a series of fishing shacks that predate the city’s incorporation after they were first built along the shore and then moved to their most recent location in the 1880s. Erskine said they once housed lobster traps and fishing gear. Two shacks were destroyed in an earlier storm in 1978.
Jane Babbitt / AP
A record 14.57-foot high tide was measured in Portland, Maine, just after noon on Saturday, after a storm surge amplified what was already the month’s highest tide, said National Weather Service meteorologist Michael Cempa. That broke the previous record of 14.17 feet set in 1978 and was the highest since measurements began in 1912. Cempa said the tide gauge measures the difference between the high tide and the average low tide.
The surge flooded some homes in Old Orchard Beach and Kennebunkport in Maine, and Hampton Beach in New Hampshire.
“I’ve seen a flood, but I’ve never seen anything like this and I lived here for 35 years,” Hampton resident Susan McGee told CBS Boston.
The floods came just days after a previous storm damaged one of Maine’s most beloved lighthouses which is featured on the state quarter.
“Very sadly, all three fishing shacks at Willard Beach have been completely destroyed in the storm,” the city wrote in a social media post.
But the South Portland Historical Society sounded a note of hope, saying on social media that it had prepared for such an event by last year enlisting architects and engineers to create drawings “so that everything would be in place to build reproductions of the shacks, if needed.”
The society is asking for donations to rebuild.
During the storm, a fishing boat ran aground in Cape Elizabeth and four people were rescued by the Coast Guard, CBS affiliate WGME reported.
1911 shipwreck exposed at Acadia National Park
As winter storms pounded the state’s beaches, WABI-TV reported that an artifact was unearthed at Acadia National Park — a shipwreck from over a century ago.
The wreck of the Tay, a schooner that ran aground during a storm in 1911, was exposed Thursday morning at Sand Beach, after being buried for decades, the Bangor Daily News reported.
Some visitors gathered to see the shipwreck, but park staff reminded the public to look and not touch, WABI reported.
“There’s big iron nails on there. I didn’t think those would still be exposed,” visitor Alissa Bischoff-York told the station.
According to the National Park Service, on July 28, 1911, the Tay was navigating a treacherous coastline during a powerful storm when it struck a ledge and broke into pieces.
“Clinging on for dear life to the broken mast, the Tay’s crew waited till the tide went out so they could scramble to the safety of the sandy beach,” the park wrote.
Most of the schooner’s cargo, about 90,000 feet of spruce planks, was washed ashore by the waves.
Eventually the crew sought safety in a home owned by the Satterlee family, who ultimately built a boathouse with salvaged lumber to honor the shipwreck.
National Park Service
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Sen. Thom Tillis says “the scope” of Helene damage in North Carolina “is more like Katrina”
As recovery missions and repairs continue in North Carolina more than a week after Hurricane Helene carved a path of devastation through the western part of the state, the state’s Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called for more resources to bolster the relief effort and likened the damage to Hurricane Katrina’s mark on Louisiana in 2005.
“This is unlike anything that we’ve seen in this state,” Tillis told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday morning. “We need increased attention. We need to continue to increase the surge of federal resources.”
Hurricane Helene ripped through the Southeast U.S. after making landfall in Florida on Sept. 26 as a powerful Category 4 storm. Helene brought heavy rain and catastrophic flooding to communities across multiple states, including Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, with North Carolina bearing the brunt of the destruction. Officials previously said hundreds of roads in western North Carolina were washed out and inaccessible after the storm, hampering rescue operations, and several highways were blocked by mudslides.
Tillis said Sunday that most roads in the region likely remained closed due to flooding and debris. Water, electricity and other essential services still have not been fully restored.
“The scope of this storm is more like Katrina,” he said. “It may look like a flood to the outside observer, but again, this is a landmass roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts, with damage distributed throughout. We have to get maximum resources on the ground immediately to finish rescue operations.”
Hurricane Katrina left more than 1,000 people dead after it slammed into Louisiana’s Gulf Coast in August 2005, flooding neighborhoods and destroying infrastructure in and around New Orleans as well as in parts of the surrounding region. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. in the last 50 years, and the costliest storm on record.
The death toll from Hurricane Helene is at least 229, CBS News has confirmed, with at least 116 of those deaths reported in North Carolina alone. Officials have said they expect the death toll to continue to rise as recovery efforts were ongoing, and a spokesperson for the police department in Asheville told CBS News Friday their officers were “actively working 75 cases of missing persons.”
On Saturday, the U.S. Department of Transportation released $100 million in emergency funds for North Carolina to rebuild the roads and bridges damaged by the hurricane.
“We are providing this initial round of funding so there’s no delay getting roads repaired and reopened, and re-establishing critical routes,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “The Biden-Harris administration will be with North Carolina every step of the way, and today’s emergency funding to help get transportation networks back up and running safely will be followed by additional federal resources.”
President Biden previously announced that the federal government would cover “100%” of costs for debris removal and emergency protective measures in North Carolina for six months.
With North Carolina leaders working with a number of relief agencies to deal with the aftermath of the storm, Tillis urged federal officials to ramp up the resources being funneled into the state’s hardest-hit areas. The senator also addressed a surge in conspiracy theories and misinformation about the Biden Administration’s disaster response, which have been fueled by Republican political figures like former President Donald Trump.
Trump falsely claimed that Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the November presidential election, were diverting funds from Federal Emergency Management Agency that would support the relief effort in North Carolina toward initiatives for immigrants. He also said baselessly that the administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, were withholding funds because many communities that were hit hardest are predominantly Republican. Elon Musk has shared false claims about FEMA, too.
“Many of these observations are not even from people on the ground,” Tillis said of those claims. “I believe that we have to stay focused on rescue operations, recovery operations, clearing operations, and we don’t need any of these distractions on the ground. It’s at the expense of the hard-working first responders and people that are just trying to recover their lives.”
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