Bar Harbour Disaster Points A Moral

Northern Advocate, 25 October 1947, Page 6

Bar Harbour Disaster Points A Moral

Stories of a devastating forest fire that has swept the famous seaside resort of Bar Harbour, in the State of Maine, and reports that 200 other fires are raging in various areas of New England, should awaken Nortiilanders to the fact - that the coming of summer, with the movement of large numbers of people to beaches, bush reservations and other holiday objectives calls for the exercise of extreme care to see that danger from fire is kept at the lowest possible level.

Northland has been endowed by Nature with so much that pleases the eye and excites the holiday spirit that it has been made the more vulnerable to the fire menace, very largely because people fail to exercise the caution that might be expected of them. Blackened trunks of pohutukawas on the many beaches which they had beautified speak eloquently' of picnic

fires which have been allowed to contact the trees when picnickers have lightheartedly returned home without making sure- that embers had been extinguished.

The same may be said of carelessly tended fires near clumps of native bush, or the carelessly discarded live cigarette butts to which have been traced on numerous occasions fires that have created serious damage in forests.

Accidents, of course, will happen in the best regulated families, but prudence and thoughtfulness would obviate many disasters, especially insofar as fires caused by holidaymakers are concerned.

It is to be hoped, therefore, that the Bar Harbour and other disastrous fires on the coast of Maine will move Northlanders to do everything possible to make fire ravage in their beautiful territory negligible if not non-existent during the summer which seems to have arrived already.