(Looking Back is a weekly column including news items reported 10 years ago in The Current, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in September 2011.)

Issue of July 25, 2002

Cindy Andreson was at home Tuesday with her parents, who live with her and her husband on Val Terrace, when a big thunderstorm hit Scarborough around 4 p.m. Lightning lit up the sky, and several bolts struck near Andreson’s house.

“We heard a loud bang and we jumped,” she said. The smoke alarms went off in the house, but after checking each room, Andreson couldn’t find any smoke. She called her husband, Charlie, a former town councilor, at work to ask what she should do next. He told her to shut off the circuit breaker, which she did. But that was only the beginning.

“Somebody knocked on our door and said the house is on fire,” she said.

Lightning had struck dead center on the roof of the house and set it on fire. The fire spread through several beams in the roof, burning a hole through to the attic.

A rabid raccoon and a rabid fox are the latest casualties in Cape’s rabies epidemic, one that is scarier than the outbreak two years ago because the diseased animals are aggressive.

In the 2000 outbreak, the few contacts domestic animals had with rabid ones were because a dog initiated the contact, according to Animal Control Officer Bob Leeman.

President George W. Bush will be coming to the Black Point Inn in Scarborough on Aug. 3 to raise money for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’campaign.

“Obviously, it’s a great honor, and, of course, it’s a boost to the campaign,” said Megan Sowards, Collins’ campaign spokeswoman.

The visit will coincide with a weekend trip Bush was planning to make to the family vacation home in Kennebunkport.

Scarborough town councilors reacted in surprise and dismay last week when they learned for the first time that recycling bins at the Hannaford grocery store in Oak Hill had been removed at the request of the company, without public notice or notice to them.

The bins have since been moved to the back of the high school after Hannaford got fed up when the overflow from them spilled into their parking lot. The situation got to the intolerable point, company officials told the Current last week, over the long July 4 weekend.

Scarborough police may begin checking driveways for out-of-state license plates if the Town Council decides to start cracking down on residents who don’t pay their excise taxes.

Town Council Chairman Jeff Messer wants the town to go after excise tax evaders, but Town Manager Ron Owens and Police Chief Robert Moulton are concerned a policy that’s tougher on evaders may be hard to enforce.

“I see an awful lot of people driving around with New Hampshire plates,” said Messer. He said even town officials used to do it.

“It’s not right. It shouldn’t happen,” he said.

Owens has asked Moulton to call police chiefs in York and Kittery, towns that have similar zero-tolerance excise-tax policies, to see how effective their policies have been. Moulton said police would be willing to go after excise tax evaders, but said he isn’t sure how effective their enforcement might be.

“I think the difficulty is that so many people now commute from Boston,” said Moulton. “If I’ve got someone who has got a New Hampshire car parked in their driveway, does that necessarily mean there’s something wrong? Well, it could. But it could also be a company car.”

Ruth Libby Jones and Eleanor Higgins, both of Scarborough, were members of SHS’s graduating class of 1944. For any number of reasons, including the end of World War II, the class has never held a reunion, until now.

Fifty-eight years after graduating, the class was getting together Friday for lunch at the Dunstan Schoolhouse Restaurant.

Ira Waltz, principal of Scarborough’s Eight Corners School, has taken a position as the assistant superintendent in the Wells school district. Waltz began his duties July 1. The search for a new principal at Eight Corners has begun, with applications closing July 18.

The first stage of Scarborough’s neighborhood visioning project concluded July 18, with a meeting of the Pine Point and Blue Point neighborhoods at the Blue Point School. “It’s a different kind of planning process,” said Frank O’Hara of Planning Decisions, the South Portland firm the town has hired to conduct the visioning project. “It’s one that starts with a conversation.”

The 50-odd Pine Point and Blue Point neighbors discussed where their sub-neighborhoods were, coming up with areas along the beach like Pillsbury Shores, the Old Pine Point neighborhood and East Grand Avenue; Eagle’s Nest and Seavey’s Landing along the river; and Peterson’s Field, Old Blue Pine Estates, Old Snow Village, Burhnahm Woods and Windsor Pines more inland.

Fire races across the roof of the Andreson home on Val Terrace in Scarborough in this file photo from the issue of July 25, 2002. File photo