UPDATE: Midnight, noon tides batter Cape Ann on Saturday +Slideshow

March 03--The rain that pounded Cape Ann on Friday on the front end of a major winter storm had left the area by midday Saturday.

But continued high winds and a third storm surge within 25 hours once again brought street flooding and more power outages to the region Saturday, just hours after an overnight ocean surge caused heavy damage to shoreline structures, especially in Gloucester's village of Magnolia and just over the town line in Manchester.

Roaring waves took out a portion of the oceanfront side of the Manchester Bath & Tennis Club on Raymond Street and sparked added concerns when the storm overturned three propane tanks and left them floating in the water, according to Manchester police.

Town police and fire crews responded at 12:36 a.m. Saturday after fielding calls reporting a smell of gas from the club and pool area, and police dispatcher Sarah Hunt said crews moved quickly to retrieve and cap the propane tanks. The building sustained heavy damage on the ocean side, with waves crashing directly into the structure.

Whitey Baun, a club board member, said the ocean side of the club, which was closed for the winter, had been equipped with "breakaway panels" so that, in the event of a major storm, they could break off without damaging the building's structure. But this weekend's storm surge overpowered the panels and more.

"Those things will just basically blow in and can be easily replaced," Baun said of the panels, "but this (storm) rushed inside, it tore apart lockers, it sent water running through the pool area out to the tennis courts. It looks like a junkyard (from debris) underneath our deck.

"We've had substantial, substantial damage," Baun said adding that no cost estimates will be known until an insurance adjuster inspects the property. "What the power of water can do is just incredible."

The overnight storm surge early Saturday morning also damaged the seawall at Manchester's Black Beach, and collapsed a portion of the seawall at Manchester's Harbor and Boardman streets in the Tuck's Point area. Police and public works crews were on the scene of that collapse Saturday afternoon.

Damage around the cape

The heavy damage on the Manchester side of the town line was matched by damage to two homes and the seawall along Shore Road in Magnolia. Gloucester fire Chief Eric Smith said residents had to be evacuated from those homes overnight, and remained displaced as of Saturday afternoon.

"That's unusual for Magnolia. That doesn't usually get hit as hard as this," Smith said. But he and other officials noted that a Friday night shift in the wind direction from out of the northeast to more directly out of the north also brought a shift in the course of the wave action that came as part of a storm surge fueled by an astronomical high tide. That proved a benefit in some areas, including in Essex.

Essex police Chief and Harbormaster Peter Silva said that while the Main Street Causeway was shut down overnight Friday and again during the storm's third high tide cycle early Saturday afternoon, the flooding was less severe than it had been when the storm's most intense rain and winds first hit during the first high tide Friday afternoon.

"It seemed to me that (the wind) wasn't forcing the water directly toward the Causeway," Silva said, "but it was more moving it around, and that seemed to bring less water infiltration. We had heard the (overnight) tide would be worse than (the midday Friday) one, but it really wasn't."

In Gloucester, the wind shift, however, couldn't save the Good Harbor Beach footbridge, which was ravaged by the winds and storm surge that hit overnight Friday into Saturday and was continuing to break apart Saturday afternoon. Gloucester's Nautilus Road and parts of Atlantic Road were closed overnight and into Saturday, with debris -- including some large rocks --churned up in to the roadway. That brought an online rebuke to sightseers from Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken.

"People need to stop taking photos/videos," she wrote. "Rocks could be hurled out of the water!"

Gloucester police and other emergency crews also responded to a home on High Rock Terrace, just east of Good Harbor Beach, after residents there evacuated because the house was flooding. Crews were still on the scene as of 2 p.m. Saturday.

Elsewhere in the city, Commercial Street, Beach Court, Western Avenue alongside Stacy Boulevard, the lower end of Essex Avenue and the I-4, C-2 site off Rogers Street flooded a third time Saturday afternoon. Two Air National Guard high-water vehicles and their two-man crews providing assistance for Gloucester's emergency personnel along Beach Court. Smith said that while a number of residents in low-lying areas evacuated their homes voluntarily, there were no calls for emergency rescues, as had been the case when a storm surge driven by a virtual blizzard socked the city and other parts of Cape Ann on Jan. 4

"People have been cooperating," Smith said.

Storm sightseers, however, became an issue in Essex on Saturday afternoon, when crews from National Grid asked police to move spectators far back from theCauseway where an insulator collapsed and threatened to send wires crashing down into standing water on Main Street. National Grid intentionally cut off power in the area, but Silva said police still moved pedestrians back to The Village Restaurant on one end of the street, and beyond Woodman's on the eastern side.

"We sure don't need a wire coming down and somebody getting electrocuted," he said.

In Rockport, residents were cooperating, where police dispatcher Ken Pedone said Saturday there had been no heavy structural damage and -- like across the region -- no reports of injuries or worse.

Rockport police still had portions of Back Beach, Penzance Road and Thatcher Road at the Gloucester line shutdown as of Saturday afternoon.

Most, though not all, Bearskin Neck residents had voluntarily evacuated as the storm kicked up an ocean surge for the second and then a third time Saturday.

"They'll be back in tomorrow," Pedone said, "when it should be better."

Many without power

Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency Saturday, joining Maryland and Virginia governors who made the declarations Friday. Declaring a state of emergency allows states to deploy federal resources and request aid.

Power outages and downed trees and wires continued to abound across all four Cape Ann communities.

In Essex alone, 6,104 customers remained without power as of 1:30 p.m. Saturday, between the Main Street shutdown and the remains of downed trees and wires on Apple Street and off Western Avenue in the area above Chebacco Lake. But power to all but 75 of those had been restored by 2:15 p.m., according to updates from National Grid.

National Grid, however, listed more than 20 separate outages in Gloucester alone as of 2 p.m., with a total of more than 200 customers without power from Eastern Point through parts of downtown and to portions of Lanesville and Folly Cove, while another 15 outages in Rockport kept more than 35 customers in the dark as of 2 p.m. Saturday.

Many of the outages listed by National Grid did not list any projected times for power to be restored. In all, the utility giant was still reporting 2,030 outages and 189,658 customers across eastern Massachusetts and other parts of New England as of 2 p.m. In addition to the high winds and driving rain, the storm also brought up to 6 inches of snow to parts of Worcester County and other high elevations in the western part of the state.

Ray Lamont can be reached at 978-675-2705, or [email protected].

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