USA > Maine > Hancock County > Bar Harbor > The story of Bar Harbor, an informal history recording one hundred and fifty years in the life of a community > Part 16
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of peat in the heath still smoldering. Never less than six men were on duty here, as pay records show.
On the morning of Tuesday, October 21, at 6 a.m., a new shift of men was brought out by Chief Sleeper, who drove his car down the wood road used by Road Surveyer Hamor, to the edge of a meadow. He then superintended the re- filling of the hose, as a precaution considered wise, since the wind had begun to blow up from the north. At this time there was, naturally, no fire at or near the hose line. While doing this Chief Sleeper sent two volunteer workers through the woods between the hose and the Crooked Road. One came back suddenly, to report a "spot fire" outside the hose line. Sleeper ran a quarter of a mile to his car, drove another quarter of a mile to Jim Shea's farm, and sent for help. A strong northwest wind was blowing, and the situa- tion was already critical. This was the start of the Great Fire, the third fire in one locality.
Naturally, not until long afterwards did Chief Sleeper bother himself about the ascertainment of exact causes. He had enough else to do. Equally naturally, confusion automat- ically arose from the fact that the fire was reported as start- ing near Dolliver's Dump, and a belief sprang up that it had started at or in Dolliver's Dump. This was clearly not so. The author has walked over the ground in question, with the burnt ground still showing black, and has seen an un- touched belt of pine trees between the place in which the spot fire was seen and Dolliver's Dump. He has gone over the line where the hose lay around the heath fire, and has measured eighty-seven paces from the nearest part of the hose line to that same spot. Those eighty-seven paces go over a slight elevation where it would be difficult for fire to go underground and stay concealed. All possible wit- nesses have been questioned by the fire department, and
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none remembers seeing embers flying from the peat they had come to watch; in fact, this peat smoldered quietly along, without any eruption of sparks, during the whole of the Great Fire. What was the cause of the third, and great, fire cannot be told. All that is certain is that it had no con- nection with either of the first two.
From the midmorning of Tuesday, October 21, the Bar Harbor fire was loose, to do damage wherever the winds drove it. From then on, until Saturday, October 25, it might be described as thoroughly out of control. Even "if 'ifs' and 'ans' had been pots and pans," it could not have been stopped under the conditions then prevailing, after it had gone on for a few hours. For a while it stayed to the west of Norway Drive, and there was hope that it might be held there and kept in the much burnt-over area of low pines and firs between the Crooked Road and the Eagle Lake Road. But means of control hardly existed. It took three engines to relay the water from the ditch at the Shea farm to the fire roaring ahead, and soon that ditch was ex- hausted and a fourth engine was needed, to take water from a hole still further away. The fire was moving away from all supplies of water, as fast as hose could be laid and engines pressed into service. Then one flying ember caught the Hugh Kelley barn, to the east of the Norway Drive, and it burst into flames, spreading the fire across the last line of defense between that point and Eagle Lake. For in that wind a backfire would have spread as fast as the original fire, besides trapping the workers who were trying to slow the fire down in its progress through the woods.
By this time, assistance was coming, in the form of engines from off the island, from Camden, Bucksport, Brewer, and Ellsworth, and a firefighting crew from the army air base at Dow Field. Likewise, a spotting plane came
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from Dow Field, only to find, soon, that there was so much smoke that no useful observations could be made from the air. As the fire spread, other towns sent apparatus.
All that could be done then was to move to Eagle Lake Road, and prepare to catch the fire as it rolled over McFar- land's Mountain. That was where, on Wednesday, October 22, another attempt was made to stop the fire. The attempt was partly successful, but a tongue of flame ran unexpect- edly out to the west, crossed onto Sargent's Mountain near Aunt Betty's Pond, and thus transformed the Bar Harbor fire into the Mount Desert Island fire. Here previously laid plans were put into effect, and the Acadia National Park authorities took over. Meanwhile, the Mount Desert fire department took responsibility for any shift to the west, and in subsequent days prepared a firebreak.
At this point, a firefighter's history would recount what happened on all three fronts. But for the town history of Bar Harbor all that need be done is to record enough to out- line the course of the fire as a whole. What happened was that the wind shifted steadily in such a way as to put much of the brunt of the firefighting on Bar Harbor's sector. The wind never let the fire test the preparations that Mount Desert made. It also blew away from Sargent's Mountain long enough to allow the trained park service firefighters, flown in from all over the East-from as far away as Florida and the Great Smokies-to check the fire and hold it within bounds. On Wednesday, as the northwest wind shifted to the west and south, pressure was on the Bar Harbor fire depart- ment, since the fire threatened to move eastward, along Eagle Lake Road, to the village of Bar Harbor. There was never a chance of making a stand at the narrow, winding Breakneck Road which connects Eagle Lake and Hull's Cove. All that could be done was to narrow down the fire
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front when it was close to the Eagle Lake pumping station.
It should be remembered that as the fire moved ahead it left behind smoldering trees, roots deeply burnt, and little spot fires which might break out in any direction. Conse- quently, as the fire moved on, more and more manpower had to be thrown into the work of cleaning up. More and more of the population of Bar Harbor found itself on the fire-lines in one way or another, and a greater and greater strain was being put on the community's resources. It was then that the possibility of having to evacuate Bar Harbor was first considered. No firefighting in the town would be successful, no matter how ample the water supply, unless the firefighters' full attention could be given to their jobs, and they could know that all who were unable to take care of themselves were out of the danger zone. All others were actively engaged in the battle.
Though these matters were discussed by Chief Sleeper and his cabinet of advisers, there was found no need for putting the plan of evacuation into effect. For the capri- cious wind swung further into the south, and swung the fire up the Breakneck to Hull's Cove.
By Thursday morning the wind was coming in great gusts and rising. Sparks flew ahead of the fire itself, so that the front of the fire was actually a series of spreading pools of fire on the ground and of torches of fire in trees. Up to this point, the fire had been purely a forest fire, and a re- markable number of houses had been saved, because in open fields it was possible to make a stand, and by drawing water from the house supply to fight the fire more ef- fectively. But by noon, Thursday, the village of Hull's Cove was in danger. The advance sparks of the fire fell on the Thayer house, near the De Grégoire cellar, and on the old Hamor house, of the shipbuilding Hamors, that brick
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house which legend likes to give to the De Grégoires. It seemed certain, so hard was the wind blowing, that the open fields of the village would go, and that the fire would destroy the woods to the north of Hull's Cove and the houses in them, including that of the Honorable Sumner Welles and the Pot and Kettle Club. So far, in two days, the fire had moved about six or seven miles and had returned to a point about two miles and a half from where it started.
Then, at three on the afternoon of Thursday, October 23, Bar Harbor suffered from a freak of nature. For a moment, just as sparks were beginning to cross the shore road at Hull's Cove, the wind dropped completely. Then, with a roar, it swung into the north, and the fire leaped forward "as if from a thousand blow-torches." Those are words used by an eyewitness. The velocity of the wind has been variously estimated, at from sixty to sixty-five miles an hour. Perhaps it was higher and attained the true hurricane force of seventy-five miles an hour, since a velocity of seventy-four miles an hour was logged by the anemometer of the United States Coast Guard Cutter Laurel, off Rockland at that time. Of the force of the wind there can be no doubt; it blew over a lattice iron- work bench at Porcupine House.
This terrible blast caught up the front of the fire that was reaching Hull's Cove, and threw it back, saving all but the houses the advance guard of sparks had ignited. It also picked up the flames all through the woods, and threw them southeasterly and then southerly. Even before the flames shot over from Hull's Cove to Bar Harbor, flames from the Breakneck came over Great Hill and tore up Cadillac and over to the Kebo Valley Golf Club, from there striking down the east side of Cadillac to Sieur de Monts Springs, and eventually over to the Jackson Lab-
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oratory, then beautifully surrounded by woods. Eventually, the fire blew out to sea at Schooner Head and Great Head, where houses were still flaming as the Laurel steamed into Bar Harbor about eleven-thirty that night. The speed with which the fire moved during the hours of "the Big Blow" was amazing. From three p.m. at the Breakneck, to six p.m. when it struck the Beehive, it traveled between five and six miles-that is, nearly as far as it had gone in the two previous days.
At this point it suddenly and grimly became clear what had to be done. The evacuation call was blown, and the Dow Field personnel did a splendid job of getting out of Bar Harbor all hands who were not actively firefighting. Only one person was left behind, an aged man under mental treatment who three times returned to his house and twice was taken out, only to slip away from those in charge of him. These evacuees were sent out by the only available road, through Sieur de Monts Tarn, until that was closed, and then halted at the obvious point at which to rally, the open athletic field.
Now, with the unexpected alteration in the wind and the terrible intensity to which it had risen, all firefighting plans had to be changed. Fortunately, all authority had been centralized from the beginning. There was none of that diversity of effort that in western Maine hampered some action. Though sectors had been handed over to park and town, and the firebreak to Mount Desert, within the sectors there was real unity of command. At Bar Harbor Chief Sleeper rapidly selected those points where a stand could be made. The retreating Bar Harbor trucks quenched sparks on the shore side of Eden Street, and probably preserved many houses from Hull's Cove almost to the town, by so staying to the last moment to put out spot
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fires. Many of those who had hurried to abandon their homes in a shower of sparks expected never to see again anything but charred ruins, and were amazed to find their houses still standing when they came back to the island. The station at the corner of Eddy's Brook, where the "Guzzle" and the De Gregoire Hotel faced each other, went to Camden and Surry. To Bucksport went the corner where Eden Street and the Eagle Lake Road meet with Mount Desert Street and Kebo Street. If a stand could be made anywhere it was there, where there was a plentiful supply of water from hydrants. At that corner, thanks to the inspiration of Chief Payson of Camden, who sent men forward under wetted-down blankets, it was possible to maintain streams of water at the very point of the fire. Naturally, it was impossible to save the three great hotels, the De Gregoire at West Street and Eden, the Belmont at Mount Desert and Kebo, and the Malvern on Kebo Street. Once anything caught, it went. But what was wetted down could be saved, and by intense effort-these words are gross understatement-the fire was held out of town.
But only at the edge of town, where the side of the fire could be eaten into by heroic men working with an ample supply of water, could that fierce fire be fought. Isolated cases existed of wetted-down white houses, in dips in the ground, where the fire did not catch. One brick and slate house, Callendar House on the Schooner Head Road, was saved by its fire-resisting construction. Three of the five buildings at Great Head, all wetted down before the fire reached there, were saved. All else in the fire's path went. As all the world knows, it was impossible to save the Jack- son Laboratory. Its walls stood, its files remained untouched in fireproof cases. But its precious store of 100,000 mice for experimentation, one of the world's chief weapons in
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the fight against cancer, were roasted to death, save for a mere thousand who were found to be sterile and incapable of passing on their hereditary traits.
It was about this time that there descended upon Bar Harbor a swarm of newspaper correspondents, who came by plane and train and car and even destroyer. They ar- rived at perhaps the worst moment for getting information. Those who knew what had happened were dog-tired, and too busy to talk. Only the uninformed had time to spare. Furthermore, there was no reason to believe that the Bar Harbor fire department had achieved the miracle of saving the bay-side houses. There was further complication in the fact that a store of dynamite, known to be at How Park, blew up at the height of the fire's fury, thus starting a legend that houses were being dynamited to save the town, though, in fact, using dynamite in such a gale would merely have spread the fire. Last of all, no one knew how far the flames had spread, and whether the national park sector, which was guarding Seal Harbor and Northeast, could do as it did, and stop the fire there. Naturally, the reporters, anxious to meet a deadline, sent back word that all the bay-side houses had gone, that Northeast was about to go, and the fire was so deep into the town that it was doubtful that even dynamite could save it. From the evidence at hand, such was a legitimate inference, and, if not true then, would be true when the papers went to press. The dis- patches as filed seem to have been good reporting, affording bases for the scarehead headlines that spread all over the country, far beyond New England, until even the Paris Figaro put on its front page an account of the fire: "La ville de Bar-Harbor est à demi detruite." As for the cause, all that one could say-Chief Sleeper not being available for anything but the duties of command-was that the
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fire had started at or near Dolliver's dump, from unknown causes, and they did not know whether or not it had been set. Properly twisted, that was the basis of Le Figaro's front- page statement in Paris that the city of Bar Harbor had been almost destroyed by fires set by the peasants of Maine in protest against the existence of the great landed es- tates.
This set of scareheads has not been Bar Harbor's greatest public relations asset. Almost equally unjustified, in another way, has been another legend, the story of a water rescue as "an American Dunkirk." The facts of the case are these: At least three sorts of requests were made for help from the sea in evacuating the town. One, before the fire turned and the hurricane-force wind drove it in a reverse direction, was made by a private individual who telephoned from the police station to the First Naval District in Boston. An- other, the moment the wind turned, was made by collabora- tion between the police department and the coast guard at Southwest Harbor. A third was made by telephone officials and others calling fishing corporations and private owners of boats in the neighborhood of Mount Desert Island im- mediately after the police department request. The appeals were promptly and generously answered. The Coast Guard Cutter Bibb, already famous for mid-Atlantic rescues, and the destroyer Powell, fortunately stationed at Portland, set out for Bar Harbor as fast as the wind would let them go, the Powell, for instance being able to steam at only twenty knots. Other vessels, such as the cutter Laurel, followed as soon as they were available. Nearer, and able to come more quickly, were the motorboats from across Frenchman's Bay. The arrival of this aid was extraordinary welcome and a wonderful reassurance. Fortunately, however, compara- tively little evacuation had to be done by sea.
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In fact, Bar Harbor, from the firefighters' point of view, was cut off only for two comparatively brief periods. But that does not mean that it was safe to go in or out. For example, one witness can tell how he entered Bar Harbor against the traffic on the Seal Harbor Road, and bounced in and out of the ditch, so intense was the smoke. Another, driving into Bar Harbor, hauled with his car a red-hot electric-light wire, which, a few minutes later, two others hauled back to Hull's Cove. Many such tales can be gathered of getting in and out of town, by those justified in taking risks. The temporarily cut off evacuees, who were waiting patiently at the athletic field to drive out when the roads should be opened, were, however, uncomfortable, to put it mildly, in the smoke, and were moved by army authorities to the wharf, which action made elementary sense. There they could be more comfortable, and if the worse came to the worst they could go along the rocks by the shore path, and by ducking into the water, survive the fire if it came past them. Such an escape was made by one boy, cut off on Schooner Head Road, who came by the shore to Pointe d'Acadie.
At this point, those in Sullivan and Sorrento, who were observing the fire, realized that there were people on the wharf, and being State of Maine people, who act in need without waiting for orders, went over to get their friends. Though some of those friends accepted the invitation others took one look at the tossing waves and stayed put. Then the Bibb steamed into harbor, having, by a superb feat of navigation in the smoke-filled waters, passed the Porcupines with the use of radar. She was not equipped to go any- where, having but little fuel in her tanks. She took on some more evacuees from the wharf. Most, however, remained, in justified faith that they could get out by road, glad as
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they were to know that help had been so splendidly brought.
Here is the place for dealing with another legend-the change of wind to the northeast, mentioned by Mr. and Mrs. Drake, in the Reader's Digest, that is seriously doubted by many. The wind was gusty and veering and might have veered in any direction, for a moment. But the fire depart- ment conclusion is that all that happened was that the wind did not veer to the west. A glance at the map will show that a straight line down Eden Street, and continued in the same direction, marks the eastern edge of the fire, from Hull's Cove to the point at which it crossed the Schooner Head Road and reached the sea. That the wind held true north, with not too much westering, was miracle enough to save the village.
In due course of time, as had been expected and as usually happens in forest fires, a road was cleared. Bulldozers pushed the bricks of the De Gregoire Hotel away and dealt with other obstructions, and a caravan of cars, guided by the police and police reserves, drove out Eden Street. That caravan left at the earliest opportunity, when it was still risky, as there was fire on both sides of it. Yet not one car pulled out of line. The death caused in that trip was from a car, coming the other way, driving an evacuation car off the road. That feat of heroism of the Bar Harbor community went almost unmentioned in the press. With that mass movement, the people of Bar Harbor went else- where. In one sense, the true Bar Harbor was at the city hall at Ellsworth, for the ensuing week.
That night on the wharf will pass into legend, as stories of it are handed down from generation to generation, since legend sometimes brings out underlying truths that otherwise would be forgotten; perhaps here it will redress
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a balance and correct the stories of what did happen that night. For so much was said, and so truly, at the time of the fire, of the aid that came from outside, of the splendid seamanship of those who came to the rescue, and of the promptness with which State and national agencies acted, that the self-help shown on the inside was overshadowed. But there, in the bravery and the calm intelligence that were demonstrated on the athletic field, on the wharf, and, above all, in the convoy of evacuating cars, is a heritage in which future generations in Bar Harbor should take great pride.
Before midnight, aid was on the spot, and no longer did the citizens of the town, and the neighboring fire depart- ments, whose aid will never be forgotten, have to carry on alone. That afternoon, the moment the wind had changed, Chief Sleeper had telephoned to the National Guard head- quarters in Augusta, and the army of Maine, for such it legally is, was on the march. The first arrival was Battery B, of the One Hundred and Fourteenth Field Artillery, from Brewer, which seems to have come into town just as the evacuation convoy went out. Soon it was followed by Batteries A and D, and the headquarters battery. These, under Major Pooler, were engaged in the vital task of helping Police Chief Abbot protect property and keep the firelines clear. Sensibly, martial law was never proclaimed, for that would have made a National Guard officer re- sponsible for firefighting and would have raised a set of questions of authority with the federal officials of the interior, army and navy departments, and the coast guard. But military measures were taken. A pass system was set up, keeping off the island all who were not engaged in the actual quenching of the fire. The basis of this in law may have been doubtful, its common-sense was obvious. And the fact that
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the National Guard was responsible to Governor Hildreth and no one else gave Major Pooler a most useful independ- ence. At a later date, this authority was buttressed by making Dr. C. C. Morrison emergency medical officer for the whole island. Before this, acting as a volunteer, he had been testing the chlorination of the water twice a day. With the power of quarantine behind it, the National Guard had all the authority it needed.
That night New England Telephone and Bangor Hydro- Electric crews were hard at work. The telephone company, when questioned, was somewhat apologetic, pointing out it had not been able to restore full service, with lines up on poles, until Sunday, the 26th. But why it should have been so apologetic is a mystery solvable only by telephone men, since for a two-hour period only, between twelve and two, was the town cut off; at first, when service was restored, only messages of the highest importance could be carried on the wires on the ground. During that period, coast guard ships maintained communication by radio telephone with Southwest Harbor.
From the army air base at Dow Field personnel came in steadily, as it could be spared, throughout the night. The next morning-the Bar Harbor fire department has on its walls a picture of the navy vessels steaming in-came two destroyers and plenty of personnel, as well as the beginning of a flow of portable pumps. Likewise, volunteers from the Bangor Theological Seminary came in to bring fresh man- power to spell the Bar Harbor volunteers, who had been, some of them, firefighting for a week without more than two hours' sleep a night.
At the same time the Hancock County Red Cross, acting as the organization that mobilized the county for relief, took over the double job of caring for those evacuees who
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could not care for themselves, and feeding the firefighters who did not have time to feed themselves. At the Ellsworth city hall was set up a registration center, where were col- lected the names and temporary locations of all evacuees. There too, the mainland end of the pass system was con- trolled, with telephonic communication with the bridge at the Narrows. Either through Ellsworth or directly from the G.A.R. Hall in Bangor rolled the truckloads of food that came regularly to the firehouse at Bar Harbor, once communications had been reopened. This was a community enterprise. In the same way in which the men of Eden had raised the bridge at North East Creek, by sharing out the work, so the women of Hancock and Penobscot Counties shared out the work of feeding Bar Harbor, whether at Ellsworth or at the firehouse. In a part of the world where town life is co-operative life, such matters get themselves managed with surprising smoothness. The knowledge of all this was heartening to those at Bar Harbor, who told one another tales of how trucks were loaded in the streets of such and such a town, with housewives and grocers and all who had something to contribute handing what they had to the driver. Indeed, so heartening a story was it, that Charles Luckman, in search for a telling plea for co- operation in helping to feed Europe, used the example of Bar Harbor in his nation-wide address.
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