More than 55,000 Maine residents, some of them in highly populated residential areas of Lewiston and Auburn, were forced to rely on camping skills as they waited for their power to be turned back on in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.
“The old-fashioned skillet comes in handy,” said Donna Manson as she baked a shepherd's pie on a gas grill in the backyard of her Granite Street home in Auburn on Tuesday evening.
The storm has left Manson and her husband, Clayton, without electricity for the last 48 hours. They've been cooking meals on the grill and making trips out for coffee in the morning.
“Thank goodness it's not hot, and it's not cold, so we've been able to keep comfortable,” Manson said.
When the sun goes down, the couple uses a combination of battery-powered fluorescent lights, oil lamps, and book lights to see, she said. They pulled out their old Scrabble board to pass the time, Manson said.
“You dig out all the old resources when there's no TV and no computer,” she said, adding that they're using an iPad to keep up with the news.
A few blocks away on Davis Street, the neighborhood has banded together to make sure that everyone is getting by, Bobbi Bubier said.
One family came by before the storm and asked if they had everything they needed, and another offered to pick up ice after the storm, said Bubier, a diabetic who needs to keep her insulin injections chilled.
The level of community involvement has been refreshing, she said, and the lack of distractions has forced people to slow things down for a few days. “It's nice, we've been able to sit and talk and visit; to take a break from our busy lives,” she said.
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