Finding out about the power outage

A big power outage yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon into the night. Apparently the whole island was out. I'd seen that there were severe thunderstorms to the north, but here it was just threatening at the time the power quit. I figured I could find out something about it on the web.

But no. I tried:

• The Mount Desert Islander
• The Bar Harbor Times
• A Google News search for maine outage bangor

The Latest Newscast at Maine Public Radio is streaming yesterdays morning's 8am broadcast. I listned to the live broadcast 8am and that didn't mention it.

Bangor Hydro has an Outage Information page, clearly tied to its automated outage reporting system, but it doesn't give any overview or reasons.

It appears that none of these sources is set up to provide this kind of fast feedback on what's happening.

So I called the Southwest Harbor Police Department business line. He had heard that there had been a lighting strike in Veazie and that all of Hancock County "down to the boarder" had been affected. He suggested calling Bangor Hydro, but I know how hard it is to talk to a person (as opposed to a machine) there.

That's the state of the art for local reporting at this point in time.