SOUTH PARIS, Maine—All Boys Distribution will be closed for as much as a week while the staff attempts to repair damages to the company’s facilities and clean up after a tornado swept through the distributor’s Maine hometown on Friday afternoon.
“The last three days have been interesting, to say the least,” All Boys founder and President Rob Ragan told AVN.com early Monday morning. “Everyone here is fine. I saw the storm starting and was able to get everyone, including employees—even my dogs—into the cellar.”
Maine is not accustomed to tornados. The state experiences an average of only two annually, but the Friday tornado was the sixth National Weather Service-confirmed twister in 2009. Authorities suspect the tornado may have been spun off by Hurricane Bill as the Category 1 storm churned northward in the Atlantic off the Eastern Seaboard on its way to Canada. By Monday morning, Bill had been downgraded to a tropical depression with winds below 70 miles per hour. The storm was expected to continue dumping rain along the eastern U.S. and Canadian coasts.
Bill was blamed for two drowning deaths over the weekend: a 7-year-old girl in Maine and a 54-year-old man on Florida’s east coast.
Authorities said no one died in the Maine tornado, although the 700-yards-wide funnel’s 100-110-mph winds wrought damage in at least three small towns.
“Damages are not yet known as to their full extent, but the cleanup could take days,” Ragan said. “We should be done by week’s end.”
He also said power has not been restored to the area and roads have been closed because of scattered debris. However, Ragan noted, Wi-Fi internet service for laptop computers and cell phones is working, so customers wishing to contact All Boys should be able to get through via email and cell calls until other utilities are restored. Response times may be slower than usual, he warned, but the company will respond.
Contact information for the distributor is available on its website, AllBoysDist.com.
