One year after twin storms battered Maine’s coastline, ripping apart wharves, docks and buildings, Harpswell is still grappling with the extensive damage and struggling to rebuild.
Locals have voiced frustration about the absence of private insurance payouts, the slow pace of government disaster relief, strict regulations on waterfront reconstruction, and the long wait for a limited number of specialty contractors to perform needed repairs.
But they’ve also expressed deep gratitude that the community has come together following the January 2024 storms to help neighbors clear away debris, repair damaged structures and devise temporary solutions to keep the town’s working waterfront operating.
“Fishermen are incredibly resilient,” said Orr’s Island resident Monique Coombs, director of community programs for the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association. “They’re doing the best they can, (applying) Band-Aids where they can, repairing and fixing where they can, relying on other lobstermen or wharves where they have to.”
Harpswell has issued more than 120 building permits related to the two storms that struck on Jan. 9 and 13, 2024, interim Town Planner Margaret McIntire said. In addition to permits for repairs and rebuilding, the town also has approved requests to mitigate future flood damage through projects such as raising homes and other structures on posts.
Limited staffing and recent turnover at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection has meant that much of the work to guide property owners through the recovery process has fallen on local code enforcement offices, McIntire said. She was a code enforcement officer before being appointed interim town planner in December.
“There was nobody else to help … when homeowners were trying to figure out what to do, what (they were allowed to) do, and who they needed permits from,” she said. “It was terribly busy and really stressful.”
Mike Drake, the town’s fire administrator and emergency management agent, took on the task of working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to administer disaster aid to qualified property owners.
After a federal disaster declaration in March 2024, FEMA set up a disaster recovery center in Harpswell the following month to accept applications. In June, the agency announced that it had approved 85 requests for individual assistance from Harpswell property owners.
In addition, six working waterfront property owners in Harpswell were issued a total of nearly $1.2 million in state grants intended to support recovery and rebuilding from damage caused by the back-to-back storms. Statewide, Maine paid out more than $21 million from its Working Waterfront Resilience Grant Program.
At the height of activity, Drake said he was spending about 40% of his time on tasks related to storm recovery. “The documentation was the biggest thing,” he said. “Just hours and hours and hours of meetings and emails and documents.”
Statewide impact
The storms didn’t just damage Maine’s coastal infrastructure, according to Sam Belknap, director of the Rockland-based Island Institute’s Center for Marine Economy. They also impacted “the families that run these wharves, and the communities as a whole.”
“Many of these properties had multigenerational connections to families,” Belknap told attendees of a webinar on coastal recovery in January 2025. “The storms left their mark not only on the wharves, but in the hearts and minds of people.”
The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association has estimated that about 60% of Maine’s working waterfront was damaged or destroyed in the storms. Many structures that were only partly damaged in the first storm were finished off by the second one.
During the webinar, several working waterfront business owners shared personal stories of how their businesses, families and communities were affected by the devastation. They included Christina Fifield, co-owner of Fifield Lobster Co., in Stonington.
Despite raising its wharf by 18 inches just one year before the storms to protect against sea-level rise, Fifield said the business still suffered significant damage.
“We thought we were doing well; we thought we were planning ahead,” she said. “When the storm hit, our dock was still completely underwater. … We were shocked.”
Fifield said it’s depressing to look at photos of the damage even a year later. Still, she said it could have been a lot worse if the community hadn’t rallied to help weigh down the wharf with heavy objects to keep it from washing away completely in the second storm.
But the structure sustained major damage, which required coming up with alternative solutions to ensure the business remained viable a few months later, when fishing season began.
“We luckily have a really close-knit community,” she said. “All of our fishermen that sell to us came down, all of our neighbors, and we were all just trying to problem-solve.”
Harpswell aftermath
Some of the wharves Harpswell fishermen have relied on for generations were severely damaged or lost forever in the storms, said Paul Plummer, the town’s harbor master.
“A perfect example is Guy Baker — he completely lost his wharf on the east side of Bailey Island, and it was right at his house,” Plummer said. “Fishermen like him have had to put bigger pressures on other wharves.”
Unfortunately for Baker, the wharf built by his great-grandfather cannot be rebuilt, town officials said, as it would no longer comply with Harpswell codes because of its size and location.
Another local wharf owner, Cundy’s Harbor resident Francis “Frank” Bichrest, was more fortunate. His commercial wharf was destroyed in the storms, but the town worked with Bichrest’s friends and family to help him rebuild.
Portland developer Arthur “Art” Girard, who owns the wharf next to Cook’s Lobster & Ale House, also on Bailey Island, has permission to rebuild but is still waiting for a builder amid a deluge of similar requests.
“He has been struggling to get contractors in there to sturdy up the pilings and just basically anything that was damaged in those storms,” Plummer said. “People are still struggling to find contractors to get there and do the work.”
Harpswell’s public infrastructure also took a beating in the storms, and much of it is yet to be rebuilt, said Town Administrator Kristi Eiane. The three most extensive restoration or replacement projects for public infrastructure are the town dock at Potts Point, Little Island Road, and Ocean Street near the Giant’s Stairs Trail.
The town dock was obliterated and will require a public vote to replace. It was partially insured, and the town is seeking federal and state funds to build a taller and sturdier replacement. Eiane said Harpswell is on track to have residents weigh in at the next Town Meeting in March.
The town performed emergency repairs to Little Island Road, on Orr’s Island, to keep it passable, Eiane said, but the town’s engineer has said more extensive work is needed to prevent further erosion over the long term.
“The recommendation was that we need to replace some of what was put in there for emergency repairs to make it a longer-term repair that will hold up,” she said.
The effort to repair damage to Ocean Street has been held up by the fact that part of the damaged area is privately owned. FEMA won’t pay for the work because it only provides relief for publicly owned roads and facilities, she said.
“We still haven’t resolved that,” Eiane said. “I did talk with that (owner) and suggested that if they wanted to offer their parcel to the town, we certainly would take a look at that. … I think I need to give them another jingle just to say, ‘Are you interested in doing that?'”
FEMA trouble
One of the biggest frustrations in the storm’s aftermath has been dealing with the extensive red tape and slow pace of federal assistance, said Harpswell Select Board Chair Kevin Johnson.
A year after the storms, he said, Harpswell has not yet received any federal relief funds to rebuild public infrastructure. “We’re dealing with FEMA rules, and all kinds of bureaucratic crap, frankly,” he said. “I would say FEMA couldn’t move any slower if they tried.”
In contrast, local officials and staff have been working tirelessly to help Harpswell and its residents recover, Johnson said. He praised Drake, the emergency management agent; Plummer, the harbor master; McIntire, the interim planner; and the town’s code enforcement office for stepping up in a time of need.
Still, there are outstanding issues that local leaders can’t solve alone. One is a FEMA rule that restricts the rebuilding of severely damaged or destroyed fish houses and other waterfront buildings larger than 200 square feet.
But even on that issue, Harpswell leaders have taken a proactive approach. Eiane, the town administrator, recently helped submit a bill to the Legislature that is expected to be taken up in the current session.
The bill would carve out an exception to the rebuilding restrictions for working waterfront businesses that suffered property damage in the January storms. Eiane said she worked on the bill with state Sen. Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick, whose constituency includes Harpswell.
According to FEMA rules, if a business in a high-risk area applies for funding or permits, it may be required to demonstrate that rebuilding will result in a viable operation that generates a reasonable return on investment. The bill seeks to waive that requirement for waterfront businesses in Harpswell, and possibly all of Maine.
Johnson said as bad as the January storms were — evoking nightmare visions of the now-legendary storms of January 1978 — the situation in Harpswell could have been a lot worse.
“Our fishermen were lucky for the most part,” he said. “None of the dealer wharves were totally destroyed, and also, they kept operating.”
