enlarge 1998 Press Herald file photo

A customer strains to see the contents of his wallet at Fabizio’s in Harpswell on Jan. 24, 1998. The store stayed open despite losing power.

enlarge 1998 Press Herald file photo

A Bell Atlantic lineman works on Jan. 11, 1998, to replace a line of 12 poles knocked down alongside Route 201 in Gardiner.

enlarge 1998 Press Herald file photo

Harry Watkins fills a bucket through a hole in the ice of a brook behind his home in Rome on Jan. 13, 1998. He used the water for washing dishes and flushing toilets.

enlarge Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

Matt Kearns, 23, talks about the ice storm of 1998 on its 10th anniversary with his mother, Denise, his sister, Shawna, 18, and his father, Greg. “It was nice how everyone helped each other,” he said.

enlarge Photo courtesy of the Kearns family

Ed and Audna Bitner, Red Cross volunteers, were assigned to the North Waterboro area. Ed helped Shawna Kearns get over her fear of going outside after the storm.

enlarge 1998 Press Herald file photo

Then-Gov. Angus King, aboard an Air National Guard helicopter, inspects downed power lines in Washington County.

"There would be this loud cracking, then the sound of breaking glass as the ice fell, then this huge thunk," she said, remembering how she and her family lost power for nine long days at their Lake Arrowhead community home.

"It was really eerie. It was dark and you couldn't see, but you could hear it," she said.

Kearns, her husband, Greg "Rock" Kearns, and their two children, 13-year-old Matt and 8-year-old Shawna, were among the thousands of Mainers who struggled through the storm and its aftermath.

Like so many of their neighbors and people throughout the state, the Kearns had their own losses, yet were able to forge new ties to the people around them as neighbors banded together to get through the worst of the storm. That sense of community is a theme that still resounds when people talk about the devastating ice storm.

"It was nice how everyone helped each other," said Matt Kearns, who today is a 23-year-old school bus driver and emergency dispatcher. "We were all going through it, but we were going through it together."

Without heat or electricity, the Kearnses fired up a kerosene heater and slept huddled around it in a downstairs room.

They stored food on the porch and waited for Central Maine Power Co., the state's largest electric utility, to restore electricity.

Neighbors needing shelter joined them for a while.

A shattered pine tree ripped off their back deck and damaged the eaves of their house. It was five days before they were able to get a shower.

"It was like a war zone," Denise said, describing the downed trees and wires that littered the roads winding through the heavily forested community.

But for all the hardships, the Kearnses look back fondly on the storm for two reasons: Ed and Audna Bitner. The retired couple from Pennsylvania were Red Cross volunteers assigned to feed people in the area. In particular, the Kearnses are grateful to Ed for helping Shawna, who had become terrified of going outside, certain a tree would fall on her.

"Ed was just so nice to me, he was so calm," said Shawna, now 18 and a recent high school graduate. "I think I was drawn to him because of that, and I would go sit by him. He became my adopted grandfather."

Night after night of listening to trees and branches falling had Shawna completely spooked, her mother said.

"She was glued to me. She wouldn't even go upstairs," Denise said.

But Ed Bitner, who has been sent by the Red Cross to disasters ranging from Hurricane Andrew to Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, was able to break through the little girl's fear.

"I was very nervous, and he'd tell me not to worry and that I'd be OK," Shawna remembers. "And my parents were saying the same thing, but to hear it from someone like him -- who goes to disasters -- it was just more comforting."

Ed Bitner said he and Shawna "just sort of hit it off" and remain close to this day.

He sends gifts on special occasions, such as Shawna's high school graduation, and the families have visited each other on vacation.

"I like children, and when this was all happening, she would come over and sit on my lap and we'd be talking," he said. "If I were calming her, it was unbeknownst to me."

Denise Kearns remembers spending so much time at the Lake Arrowhead clubhouse during the storm that the Bitners just "seemed like they were a part of our family."

Bitner eventually enlisted Shawna and Matt to help deliver food to people stuck at their homes.

"That was one of the first times I'd been outside in a while where I wasn't nervous," she said. "I felt better because I knew I was helping people get food."

Audna Bitner said she isn't surprised, since her husband's quiet competence and ability to listen have earned him many friendships over the years.

"That's just the way he is. Everywhere he...