MONMOUTH -- An shack once used for ice fishing on Annabessacook Lake gave town officials a headache last week when it washed up against the dam near the intersection of Route 135 and Sanborn Road.

Herb Whittier, the town's public work's director, hopes his crew removed the ice fishing shack in time, but he is keeping his fingers crossed.

"There may be some major damage we don't know about," Whittier said. "We'll be keeping an eye on it this summer."

Whittier's crew first noticed the runaway shack last week during the yearly routine of adding wood planks to the spillway to begin raising the lake to its summer levels.

The shack, which was just below the surface, was pinned up against the dam gate by the force of the rushing water.

"I don't think it was in here more than a day or two," Whittier said. "If it had been there more than that we would have had a horrendous problem."

The water vortex created by the shack had already dug a roughly 4-foot hole in the clay bottom about 10 feet away from the main portion of the dam, Whittier said. The big fear, he said, was that the swirling water would dig its own channel underneath the dam, thus creating an ever-widening path for water to spill, uncontrolled, downstream.

The damage could have cost thousands of dollars to repair, and made it almost impossible to maintain normal water levels in Annabessacook Lake until repairs could be made in the fall, Whittier said.

"It could have been a very catastrophic event," he said.

With water pressure on the shack too great to lift it out of the water, Whittier hired an excavator to smash the shack into small pieces.

"Once he ripped it apart, the current got into it and she was gone," Whittier said.

He was left with hundreds of pieces of foam insulation to skim from the water, however.

Ice fishing shacks must be labeled, with the owners name and address in letters at least 2 inches high, said Sgt. Kevin Adam of the Maine Warden Service.

But if the shack that crashed into the dam was ever labeled, that portion of the building had long since washed down stream, Whittier said.

"Who knows where this came from or how far it came from?" Whittier said.

Whittier filled the hole dug by the vortex with large boulders.

So far, the repairs have cost the town less than $1,000.

There does not appear to be any water funneling under the dam, he said, but he won't be uncrossing his fingers any time soon, either.

State law requires ice shacks be removed from ponds and lakes by April 3, but this was an unusual season, said Adam.

Craig Crosby -- 623-3811 Ext 433

ccrosby@centralmaine.com