Page 18 - IAV Digital Magazine #443

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Blizzard Blows Historic
Building Into Canada,
Maine Wants It Back
By Bill Galluccio
Winter Storm Grayson ham- mered the Northeast with heavy snow and high winds in early January. The winds were so strong that they ripped part of a historic building from its foundation in Maine and blew it onto an island in Canada.
According to the Bangor Daily News, a brine shed from McCurdy’s Smokehouse in Lubec was blown 100 yards into the Lubec Narrows and then floated to Campobello Island in Canada. The shed was one of five buildings that made up the historic McCurdy’s Smokehouse, "which was the last traditional smoked-herring
facility in the United States when it closed in 1991."
WLBZ-
TV reports that a local non-prof- it, Lubec Landmarks, was ready to sal- vage the dam- aged shed, but ran into legal setbacks with Canadian authorities. They refuse to let the contrac- tors hired by Lubec Landmarks onto
the site to begin salvaging the remains of the shed. They say that scavengers have claimed the shed as their own.
While authori- ties wrangle over who has rights to the shed, those scavengers have already started disman- tling the build- ing. That wor- ries Lubec Landmarks president
Rachel Rubeor: “The bureau- cratic nonsense is hampering us big time. Let’s face it. It’s not like we’re terror- ists or anything”
Local authorities have been unable to do much, so Rubeor reached out to Senator Angus King, writing a letter asking for assis- tance: “It seems everyone is eager to help but can’t move
because of these rules. It is only exacerbat- ed now by the influx of vandals who with chain- saws want to cannibalize our building”.
Rubeor hopes to see the issue resolved quick- ly, so Lubec Landmarks can salvage as much as possi- ble and work to rebuild the his- toric shed.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine