KENNEBUNK – The storm – with snow and ice – blew in Sunday night, Jan. 22.

Calls for trees down in the roadway, tree limbs on homes, wires down, no power, vehicle crashes quickly followed.

When those storms happen, it is all hands on deck for those whose job it is to help solve the problems, take care of those in trouble, try to ascertain people are safe, and to restore electric power.

Agencies – like fire departments, police, public works crews, utilities and others work together. To hear a bit about what they were dealing with, we talked to Kennebunk Fire Chief Justin Cooper, Kennebunk Light and Power District General Manager Todd Shea, and Central Maine Power spokesman Jonathan Breed.

Staffing up ahead of a major storm – adding personnel to augment those already scheduled to work can help make a difference.

That is what Kennebunk Fire Rescue, Kennebunk Light and Power District and Central Maine Power did to help make sure that when the phones started ringing that Sunday night and continued after the weather had calmed down there were enough people to respond.

“In the first 24-hour time period we had close to 112 or so emergency calls – and in the following days the calls increased in volume each day double to triple,” said Cooper. Appointed chief in July, Cooper has been with the department for a long time and through similar storms in the past – and so added personnel. There are usually five to seven people assigned to Central Station, but there were nine on duty during the storm, he said. Washington Hose and West Kennebunk, both call company stations, tend to be staffed by students, but during the storm, there were three or four emergency people assigned there.

For Kennebunk Light and Power District, there were five in-house line workers and two more, from Eastern Maine Electric Cooperative of Calais, plus the utility’s regular contracted tree crew and another crew from Concord, New Hampshire.

Breed, of CMP, said 200 line crews responded to outages throughout York County. In addition to crew from an Avangrid affiliate in Connecticut, he said there were others from East Coast states and from Canada. One crew, working on Great Hill Road, hailed from Holland Power Services of Maugerville, New Brunswick.

In the Kennebunks, the storm produced snow – though less snow and wind than predicted – and ice.

Central Maine Power, which has slightly more than 127,000 accounts in York County, had 45,000 reported power outages countywide, of varying durations during the storm and its aftermath.

“While the rest of Maine saw lighter, fluffier snow, York County bore the brunt of the damage from last week’s storm due to heavy, wet snow and the long duration of the storm,” said Breed. Those factors, along with leftover snow from a previous storm, caused extensive tree damage throughout the area, making travel and restoration efforts difficult, he said.

Looking ahead, Breed said CMP’s use of tree wire, designed to protect wires from falling trees and limbs, helps.

In the Kennebunk Light and Power District, Shea said outages peaked at about 1,500 of the utility’s 7,500 accounts, A neighboring provider’s loss of a transmission line increased the outages experienced by Kennebunk Light and Power to 2,500  to 3,000, for a time, Shea estimated, but he emphasized that is a rarity, last occurring in 2014.

The damage was heavy – except in a portion of West Kennebunk, Shea said, where there was little impact in the area beyond the power district substation.

Shea recalled one tree he saw while driving on Route 9 in Kennebunkport.

“It was an oak tree, which had a five-foot diameter base,” he said. “It looked like the tree had exploded.”

He said the power district received its first call at about 1 a.m. Monday Jan. 23 in in the Wells portion of the district, where a tree had come down on a home and from there, there were outages on Sea Road, Port Road, and in Arundel and so on.

“The calls were coming in regularly and there were larger outages,” he said, He pointed out that in one instance on Sea Road, there were branches still falling, so the utility had to pull crews from that area for safety reasons.

“We have a wonderful relationship with Kennebunk Fire Rescue and the police and Kennebunkport dispatch – there’s a seamless interoperability that worked really well,” said Shea.

Shea estimated physical damage at $10,000 to $30,000; only three utility poles broke, he said, with most of the damage confined to trees and branches falling on power lines. Labor costs, as of Tuesday, Jan. 31, were still being calculated.

For Cooper, who joined Kennebunk Fire Rescue in 1998, the storm had similarities to the big ice storm that year – but thankfully, he said, of shorter duration.

“The bulk of the calls were for big trees that had broken off due to snow and ice weight, blocked in roads, power lines arcing in roadway, and trees through people’s home causing damage,” said Cooper. He said some damage to residential property was significant.

Also, there were calls for vehicle accidents, carbon monoxide issues with generators operating too close to a building or operating in a garage or enclosed area.

On Tuesday night, Jan. 24, the department responded with mutual aid to the Wells Sanitary District treatment plant for a fire.

Cooper said several people who rely on oxygen had no power in their homes, so the fire department either stepped in with some of their own or drove the patient to the warming shelter set up at the Kennebunk High School gymnasium.

The warming shelter opened Monday evening Jan. 23 and closed Jan. 26. Several volunteers, including Kennebunk Fire Rescue paramedics and firefighters, the department’s administrative assistant, York County Emergency Management Agency and others staffed the shelter.

“It shows the dedication people have,” said Cooper.

At the Jan. 24 select board meeting, members noted police, fire and highway personnel were all working together.

“That was a doozy of a storm,” said member Leslie Trentalange. “Thank you to all involved.”

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