{"id":1173,"date":"2026-02-23T05:29:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T10:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2026-02-23T05:29:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T10:29:29","slug":"local-news-february-23-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/23\/local-news-february-23-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Local News &#8211; February 23, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Winter Storm<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(Caribou) \u2013 A blizzard warning is posted for Downeast Maine this morning, and that has already prompted many local schools to close.\u00a0 The National Weather Service in Caribou is projecting the storm will start about 9AM in Hancock and Washington Counties, and by the time it ends around 3-o\u2019clock tomorrow morning, some places could have 14-inches of heavy snow.\u00a0 During the storm, sustained winds of 45-to-50 miles an hour are likely, with gusts up to 65-miles an hour on land and 70-miles an hour out to sea are projected.\u00a0 The storm is expected to batter much of the east coast of the US.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rockland Protest Arrest (BDN\/Midcoast Villager)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(Rockland) \u2013 Police arrested a 65-year old Rockland man during the weekend after he allegedly drove a plow truck near a crowd of protestors at Chapman Park.\u00a0 The Mid-Coast Villager reports Michael Robinson is charged with reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon and driving to endanger, both felony charges.\u00a0 Police were on hand as Robinson reportedly dropped his plow blade and drove by the group of pro-democracy demonstrators, covering them with slush on Saturday morning.\u00a0 He\u2019s released a $1-thousand dollars bail.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Blood Drives Discontinued (BDN)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>(Bangor) \u2013 The days of donating blood at mobile blood drives in Eastern and Northern Maine are numbered.\u00a0 The American Red Cross will stop the remote blood collections in July according to the Bangor Daily News.\u00a0 A spokeswoman says the blood donation center in Bangor will remain open and they don\u2019t expect the decision to affect availability of blood.\u00a0 \u00a0Jennifer Costa says the mobile units closure affects 13 employees and had become expensive and logistically challenging.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gas Station Crash (WABI) <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(Waterville) \u2013 Police in Waterville are investigating a crash that left a pedestrian dead after a vehicle smashed into another car at a gas pump at a Main Street convenience store.\u00a0 WABI-TV reports the crash happened yesterday morning just before 11:30.\u00a0 The crash hit and killed someone in the parking lot at the Big Apple Store.\u00a0 State Police were assisting Waterville police with reconstructing the crash.\u00a0 Officers did not release names of the driver or the victim right away.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Blue Hill Library<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(Blue Hill) \u2013 An unused lot across the street from the Blue Hill Public Library will become part of the library campus.\u00a0 Officials report to Star 97.7 the library has reached an agreement to purchase the lot from Northern Light Blue Hill Hospital.\u00a0 There\u2019s a building on the 4-tenths of an acre lot that was once used by Healthy Peninsula but has been vacant for several years and is currently unusable.\u00a0 The library says it does not plan to use the building for now.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Winter Storm &nbsp; (Caribou) \u2013 A blizzard warning is posted for Downeast Maine this morning, and that has already prompted many local schools to close.\u00a0 The National Weather Service in Caribou is projecting the storm will start about 9AM in Hancock and Washington Counties, and by the time it ends around 3-o\u2019clock tomorrow morning, some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/star977fm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}