OLD ORCHARD BEACH — The sandy 7-mile Old Orchard Beach – one of the most recognizable stretches of the southern Maine coastline – looks noticeably different this year.

Back-to-back storms in January caused severe erosion that wiped out the dunes, changed the shape of the beach and exposed hazards that town officials say they have never had to contend with. At least 5 feet of sand was washed away near the pier, revealing parts of support columns that are usually buried. And new sandbars off the shore are causing rip currents.

As lifeguards kept watch over the water and beachgoers lounged in the sand Friday morning, Fire Chief John Gilboy described the impacts of the storms to members of the state’s Infrastructure Rebuilding and Resilience Commission who gathered in Old Orchard Beach to hear from York County municipal officials about the extensive damage from the two January storms.

Gilboy pointed to an old outflow pipe and a rocky ledge under the pier that have always been buried in sand.

“We’ve never seen these before,” he said.

Town managers from Old Orchard Beach to Kittery described the extensive damage in their communities, detailed ongoing efforts to repair their infrastructure, and said they need support to help them prepare for future storms. They also called on the state to provide more guidance and support for small communities to navigate the complex and time-consuming process of getting reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Friday’s listening session was the second for the commission since Gov. Janet Mills established it on May 21 in response to a series of disaster-level storms that hammered Maine in December and January. The winter storms caused an estimated $90 million in damage to public infrastructure, ranging from Kittery to Eastport and inland to collapsed roads and culverts in the western mountains, according to state claims made to FEMA.

The commission plans to travel around Maine to see how the state can help those whose needs do not fit neatly into federal disaster relief categories. Hours after it was created, the 24-member board held its first meeting in Stonington, the state’s most lucrative lobstering port, where they heard from town officials and lobstermen about the extensive damage to the working waterfront.

In York County, county emergency management officials told the commission about the preparation for the January storms, the unprecedented flooding and erosion, and the ongoing efforts to clean up while preparing for future storms. They showed photos of washed-out seawalls and decimated dunes and videos of the storm surge flooding streets and water cascading into a basement.

While storms are nothing new, there has been a noticeable shift in the frequency and intensity, said Megan Arsenault, deputy director of the York County Emergency Management Agency. She said the agency is working with communities across the county on mitigation and to build “bigger, better, stronger.”

Sen. Donna Bailey, D-York, whose district includes Old Orchard Beach and Saco, said she is thankful the governor formed the commission because it is crucial that federal, state, county, local communities and private property owners work together. She said Camp Ellis has “really for quite some time been the canary in the coal mine.”

“People now in places like Ocean Park have had a taste of what Camp Ellis has been experiencing for decades,” she said. “Unfortunately, we all know it’s only going to get worse.”

DEVASTATING STORM DAMAGE

By the time the storm hit Old Orchard Beach in January, town staff had been preparing for days. But nothing could truly prepare them for the amount of rain and storm surge that flooded streets and homes, cutting off large areas of town.

“Within minutes, there were places we could not get to,” Gilboy said.

Fire crews waded through waist-deep water to get to a garage that was on fire. With no access for firetrucks, Gilboy rode on the top of a public works front end loader to get through flooded roads. Propane tanks floated everywhere. At one point, Gilboy stepped off the vehicle and found himself in water above his head.

Crews used a bucket truck to evacuate stranded residents and borrowed an airboat from the Maine Warden Service to get to inaccessible areas of Ocean Park. There was no way for mutual aid crews from Saco and Scarborough to get to town to help with emergencies.

“People that never saw floodwater, we could not get to them,” Gilboy said.

Rep. Lori Gramlich, D-Old Orchard Beach, who lives in Ocean Park and is executive director of the nonprofit Ocean Park Association, called the storms a tragedy for the town.

“Seeing these pictures again is traumatizing. I’ve never, ever, ever seen anything like this in my life,” she said.

Town Manager Diana Asanza said Old Orchard Beach is still recovering from the January storms five months later. Homes and businesses along the beach continue to be at risk because the dunes that protected them “did their job” but are now gone.

“If we continue to see storms like this, we will not be as lucky next time,” Asanza said.

Patrick Fox, Saco’s public works director, told commission members that he’s spent the last 20 years putting Band-aids on “the most erosive 2,000 feet of Maine’s coastline.”

Fox said he’s always pointed to “great mitigation options” like raising roads, but many of those projects are not an option because there isn’t enough time, space or money for them.

Laurie Smith, town manager of Kennebunkport, said town officials in the region have been working together to share ideas about how to prepare for storms and become more resilient. She described the challenge of deciding which infrastructure projects to tackle and then securing funding, and of seeing the impact on people in the community.

“Their dreams were lost, their assets were lost, their visions of families that come here and enjoy it were lost,” she said.

After working through the January storm and seeing the extensive damage – including one road that was so rippled she said it “looked like a wave went through the pavement – Smith went home feeling defeated.

“I cannot tell you how heartbroken I was,” she said.

THE IMPACT IN OCEAN PARK 

After meeting with officials at the local fire station on Friday, Gilboy led the commission on a tour of Ocean Park and Old Orchard Beach to highlight some of the hardest hit areas.

On New Salt Road, Gilboy and Gramlich described how flooding was so bad that Goosefare Brook flowed over a bridge, forcing officials to close Seaside Avenue. In the basement of one home, the flooding buckled the floor and filled the room with sand – something Gilboy had never seen before.

As the group walked to the beach, Gramlich pointed out debris that is still tangled in the rosebushes that line the narrow streets and an outdoor shower that floated through the neighborhood during the storm. At one home, crews were working to clean up and repair the property, she said.

While commission members talked with local officials on the beach, Steve Gardner walked across the sand from the cottage his family has owned for decades on Porter Road. It is the last house on the beach before the Saco town line and he said it has survived countless storms.

But Gardner, who is from Waltham, Massachusetts, said the January storms changed the beach in a way he could never have imagined. The dunes that were once high in front of the cottage are now washed away, exposing the house to the ocean. For the first time, there was more than a foot of standing water in the lower level of the cottage because the water was so high.

“We’ve been here since 1985 and it’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said.

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