THE BAR HARBOR FIRE (Taken from "Mount Desert - The Most Beautiful Island In The World" by Sargent Collier) The great fire of 1947 was a crucible in which Mount Desert Island showed the world that herpeople were of the stuff of tensile steel. Those who beat out the flames remember it as three weeks in which they seldom removed rubber boots from drawn and blistered feet. Benzedrine pills by the pocketful kept them going without sleep for as long as five consecutive nights. October, traditionally, is Mount Desert's most glorious month and 1947 was no exception. Indian summer held the glamor isle in a sultry and wanton embrace, occasionally the mercury touched eighty degrees. There had been no rain since May Tinder dry conditions extended throughout the state, the worst, according to the Maine Weather Bureau, in three hundred years. On the island earlier forest fires had been dispatched that summer by time- tested country methods and undoubtedly the great Bar Harbor Fire would have been disposed of in like manner had it not been for the three hours of almost hurri- cane wind in the later afternoon of Thursday, October 23. Then Bar Harbor stole the front pages all over the world. No one knows for certainty how it started, but the community had tolerated a supposedly harnless criminal in Dolliver's Dump all summer. Here a fire smolder- ed sullenly, occasionally bursting into sufficient flame to call for a nightly dousing but never complete extinction. The light winds that came up with dawn always found sufficient enbers to fan into dangerous flame. How did the fire actually start if not in Dolliver's Dump? It has been suggested that sun pouring through the glass of a discarded automobile or a bottle acting as a magnifying glass could have been responsible. It is known only that the holocaust was born in the uninspiring vicinity of the dump where peat bogs can carry flame underground, and that no one appreciated the greatest threat Mount Desert ever faced until too late. The big wind of the twenty-third, a predicted but unbelievable gale, blew the flames past all opposition, and in less than three hours traveled six miles down a three-mile-wide track, took the piper's fee for man's mistake in underestimating the dire potentialities of a forest fire. Spasmodic flames parried opposition for a week in the midland areas before estab- lishing an upperhand on Tuesday, the twenty-first, the day the Army Air Corps fire fighters arrived from Dow Field, Bangor. The local authorities were asked to make decisions of strategy, for the fire was now "zigging" to Eagle Lake Road and McFarland's Hill and casting toward Sargent Mountain and Northeast Harbor, in fact a two-pronged fire that had crossed the Norway Drive and penetrated the Sunken Heath (Mount Desert pronunciation: "haith"), entered the out of control stage. Embers and clots of flame rode on the wind from treetop to treetop, seening to carry the fire ahead of itself in a distructive game of leap-frog. Dried branches and slash hissed and flared like last week's Christmas tree. Tree trunks, though green in appearance, under the pressure of interior moisture suddenly expanded by the intense heat, exploded like musketry; in the forests there were sounds as if wooden walls were being torn by a giant ripper. Fire fighters said there were two fires; one aloft (the crown fire) in the treetops and the other on the forest floor traveling on an incendiary carpet of dried autumn leaves, fir and pine needles. As the fury increased assistance came from off island ave Canden, Bucksport, Belfast, Blue Hill, Ellsworth, Orono, 01₫ Town, and Dow Field, Bangor, National Park authorities flew in exports in forest fire control from distant Florida and the Great Snokies, And the Navy, and Coast Guard, steaming from Boston through heavy seas arrived at 7 a.m. Friday, October 24. with the Arney earlier on the scene; all service branches proved their value without actually declaring partial law. Now it can be told that guardsmen were issued but one cartridge each. By Wednesday the 22nd there was a positive acknowledgement that the town had a real fire on its hands. The Chief of Police requested that the State Liquor store be closed for the duration of the energency. This was done, the first move of its kind since Maine went wet in 1933, and without waiting for an act of legislature. After the evacuation on "Terrible Thursday" eventually women volunteers and the Red Cross worked night and day to provide food and creature comforts. Exhausted men caught brief naps on the floor of the Bar Harbor Fire House, the command center, between calls to duty on the ever-shiting fire lines. The well learned practices OF Civilian Defense remembered from war days had workable application. It was the type of fire in which predatory instincts of wild animals are suspended in common peril and the fox and wildcat, the rabbit and deer seek safety in close proximity in water-filled ditches or ponds. Such a parallel emerges from the Bar Harbor fire for on one critical night, there was a call for a pair of volunteers from a burning area deep in the woods, where there was a possibility of being trapped. Two men who long had been unspeaking enemies stepped forward, leaped aboard a small truck and sped away to the danger zone, but not to eternal flame. As for the climax blow on the afternoon of October twenty-third: Just as sparks were flying across the shore road at Halls Cove towards the coastal show places, the southwest wind stopped dead. There was an ominous respite and then a gale whistled out of the northwest. The fire quadrupled its speed in a new direction and took off toward Bar Harbor town but away from the shores of Frenchnan's Bay, leaping Breakneck Road, Witch Hole and Fawn Ponds like a blowtorch under forced draft. The cluster of pumping engines including Mt. Desert Township companies, Northeast and other Island brigades working at Hulls Cove were now cut off from access to Bar Harbor. The full gale was now in command. The Coast Guard Cutter, Laure1, hurrying to the aid of Bar Harbor recorded by instruments, while sixty miles away, a wind velocity of seventy knots. Residente across Frenchmans Bay are forever sounding off how Bar Harborites sit on their famous view. Now these off-islanders saw the shore line as they'd never see it again, the billows of smoke and flame flying across the lower hills, like the sweep of clouds in a Guido Reni chrono. Fishermen of Lanoine, Hancock Point, Sullivan, Gouldsboro, Sorrento and Winter Harbor put out across the Bay expecting to assist in an American Dunkirk. As they approached the Bar Harbor pier it was necessary to pick holes in the smoke -- they called it "navigating by the seat of their pants," a human equivalent of radar. Meanwhile, following orders, four thousand Bar Harbor folks not actually engaged in fire fighting, with whatever property they could manage - - one pair transported a refrigerator - - removed to the athletic field. Through the slightly bewildered but joking crowd a woman methodically pursued her lost cat up and down the field by beating on a pan with a speon; Tabby accustomed to this method of reconnaissance eventually appeared. New reports of the approaching fire seened to indicate that the field might lie in its path; word was passed to the patient gathering to remove to the town pier. Shadowy forms, like refugees of Hitler's war as seen on a flickering newsreel began the half mile march in the choking dusk, a darkness accentuated by smoke. Some left belongings on the field; others as they marched dropped suitcases and bundles be- hind hedges along Main Street - - for safe keeping and to lighten the burden. On reaching the wharf floodlights revealed the picture of giant waves making escape by sea frightening. with the night cane bitter cold, the first frosty autumn evening in weeks. The wind was due north. By nine thirty o'clock a command cane over the loud speaker for cars to make a dash for the mainland by shore highway 3. Bulldozers opened a path through the ruins of the DeGregoire Hotel and a long motorcade weted by fire hoses for good measure, convoyed by state policemen and led by seven buses filled mostly with elderly people, ran the gauntlet of flame and flying ash, carrying the majority out of the danger zone into the protection of Ellsworth. Earlier that afternoon about 3:30 or 4:00 the evacuation signal 7-7 had sounded. All who could were advised to get off the island. The road by Sieur de Monts Spring and the Tarn, although full of smoke was still unscorched: a company of foresighted individuals whose automobiles were not required for fire fighting started around the flank of the fire, some 700 cars taking in stragglers as the went via Otter Creek and Seal Harbor to the head of Somes Sound and to Town Hill-- eventually to the safety of the mainland. This daylight motor file heading into a blinding haze of smoke and the setting sun, running bumper to bumper over a twenty mile shore line course at never more than 25 miles per hour was composed mostly of women drivers. No traffic accidents occurred. Meanwhile, like an express train that has passed through the edge of town, the fire drove overland for the open sea, having leveled in its path several hot els as well as dwellings on the secondary hills, and the Highbrook Road, Eagle Lake Road, Kebo and Strawberry Hill areas. Later Newport Mountain, Schooner Head and the Bee Hive were to be seared before the wind drove the main column of flame out over the ocean a mile beyond Great Head, an unsupported black cloud with a flaming core of burning resinous vapor. This long arc of flame turned back little boats from the adjacent islands. They returned next day to Northeast Harbor, laden with homebaked pies, cakes and bread for the fire fighters' canteens. The conflagration was still out of control and remained so at least until the twenty-fifth, and long after the fire, like a mortally wounded dragon, continued to blow its hot breath on whatever conbustible it could reach, giving weary fire fighters little rest. The "all out" signal was not sounded until November seventh, and weeks later, after snow had fallen, fire smoldered in peat four feet below the surface of Sieur de Monts Meadows. Outbreak of numerous fires, near but unrelated to the major conflagration, had furnished a mystery, until it was learned they were set, but not by an intentional incendiary. Raccoon, notoriously curious creatures, too often lingered until fur ignited, then raced away and rolled in dry leaves or needles in frenzied effort to smother the fire. An Acadian National Park naturalist, Wilbur Doudna, contri- butes one believed-it-or-not eyewitness incident: he saw a set of Siamese twin raccoons who were joined at the shoulder noving ahead of the fire and apparently making their escape. Loss of wild life was not heavy. Five burnt deer carcasses were reported by a survey of a group from the University of Maine, The Maine Co-operative Wild Life Research Unit. Usually deer with their great speed can run through or out-distance flame; but this conflagration was too fast and covered too wide an area. A few partridges were unable to fly over the top of the crown fire. Property damage was great. Five of Bar Harbor's hotels were destroyed; sixty-seven of the two hundred and twenty-two summer cottages and one hundred and seventy of six hundred and sixty-seven permanent homes. The Jackson Laboraty was gone and 8,750 acres of Acadia National Park were blackened. A ball of flame alighted on the old brick Hamor house at Hulls Cove and it was almost instantly consumed. At the height of the fire it became apparent that pay for volunteer fire fighters could bankrupt the town and announcement was made that there would be no recon- pense for such services. But this failed to alacken efforts of the volunteers, one hundred and seventy of whom had lost their own homes. Despite the magnitude of the disaster, loss of life was light. An elderly man, ignoring advice, entered his home a third time to save a cat and did not return. A girl was killed in a traffic accident, and a man and a woman, already ill, succumbed to heart attacks. On Eagle Lake Road, one of the areas gutted most by the fire, a celebrated Siamese Cat Kennel, cats included, was a total loss. There were close calls for humans: some of the Rockefeller foresters and a group of the University of Maine volunteers who were holding the line of the Northeast Harbor side of Eagle Lake Road during Thursday's blast, found themselves trapped before onconing sheets of flames. Diving into Aunt Betty's pond, they submerged for the better part of an hour, safe in the knowledge that their heads would be unscathed in a breathing space of a foot or two, that always exists between flame and the surface of water. Another spectacular incident occurred on a smoking woodswood at night when a rampaging deer knocked a volunteer off the run- ning board of a moving truck. The firefighter's injuries were gory but not fatal. T The Paris "Figaro" on its front page screamed "La ville de Bar Harbor est a demi detruite." "Le Figaro" tried to imply that Bar Harbor had been fired by Maine peasants protesting great landed estates. Actually, the gardeners and caretakers saved many of the large houses in their charge by wetting down roofs until flames forced then off. After the big fire, Benjamin Hadley, superintendent of the Acadia National Park, could report: "The park suffered serious damage to about a third of its forest cover in the forest fire of 1947. Literally the situation looked black after the fire had passed, and hope for a quick regrowth of new vegetation was dim. But nature has done a marvelous job in reclothing the burned area, and a new forest is in the making. Many years will pass before it reaches naturity, but the fire sear is healing much more rapidly than was expected, and soon the skeletons of the burned trees rising above the new greenery will be of the only reninder that the fire passed this way."