Playground Of U.S. Rich' Ravaged

Northern Advocate, 25 October 1947, Page 7

Playground Of U.S. Rich' Ravaged

26,000,000 - DOLLAR FIRE

(New Zealand Press Assn—Reuters —Copyright)

NEW YORK, Fri. (10.30 a.m.).— Large sections of Bar Harbour (Maine), the Atlantic playground of America’s rich, and six other communities were virtually wiped out today by forest fires, which have been sweeping the New England states. The deathroll is already nine and property damage exceeds 26,000,000 dollars.

Bar Harbour itself is deserted after a spectacular all-night evacuation by land and sea. The flames levelled 200 to 300 homes, including the summer show places of the international society set.

The damage to ruined mansions alone is set at $8,000,000, not counting the loss of the art treasures and valuable furnishings they contained. Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire have hundreds of men fighting the flames. Shifting winds in New Hampshire are driving the flames directly at the heart of the industrial city of Rochester, where 16,000 school children are being concentrated in case evacuation is necessary. 200 OTHER FIRES More than 200 other forest fires are raging in New England and the damage in the state, of Maine totals $4,000,000. Hundreds of houses have been destroyed. The police at Bar Harbour herded all the town’s population to the waterfront. A rescue fleet of 40 fishing boats joined the Navy and Coastguard craft which came from a dozen New England ports to rescue the 2000 residents huddled on the waterfront. In a miniature Dunkirk, the boats carried refugees across Frenchman’s Pay to Gouldsborough, on ' the east mainland shore. Many of the boats had to be guided by radar because of the pall of smoke which was blanketing several miles of the coast. LAND ROUTE REOPENED All electricity was cut of! in the town and the darkness complicated the rescue problem.

The evacuation by sea was halted at least temporarily late last night when an escape route by land was reopened. Soldiers, some of them asbestosclad, plunged with bulldozers, shovels, axes and dynamite into the fire zone to hew open the new road. By then about 400 residents had been taken out by sea. Among the well-known families with summer residences at Bar Harbour are the Ford, Rockefeller and Pulitzer families. The first reports of the holocaust to reach outside areas came from a man who waded two miles along the ocean edge to escape from the fire-ringed town. “EVERYTHING ON FIRE” Mr Morris Gilley, one of the few residents who made their way out of Bar Harbour at the height of the blaze, said: ■ “Everything is on fire. Our big hotels, our homes, the big estates—everything is going up in smoke. All those grand estates between Hulls Cove and Bar Harbour are just one big ball of fire. “I think Joseph Pulitzer’s big house went up.” Another report said that the estates burned included those of the novelist Mary Robers Rinehart and the former Secretary of the Treasury, Mr Henry Morgenthau. Planes will take off at dawn to search for some persons reported to be lost. State police and National Guardsmen were ordered into Bar Harbour to suppress an outbreak of looting. There was one accident when an army truck, speeding in to pick up refugees, struck and killed an unidentified woman. SUMMER RESORT \ Bar Harbour is 115 miles from Portland, the largest city, and chief seaport of Maine. The population of the town at the time of the 1940 census was 4378. Situated on Mount Desert Island, the town is a fashionable summer resort. The Acadia national park and the drive to the summit of Cadillac mountain, the highest peak on the Atlantic seaboard, attract large numbers of visitors. Whole towns have been abandoned. More than 400 houses and other buildings have been destroyed in the past two days. Patients were moved from the hospitals and children from the schools. Many highways in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts are filled with fleeing persons, some of whom are driving cattle ahead of them. ■ 1 SAVED BY BULLDOZER Devastating fires are raging at Biddeford, Maine, where the Red Cross announced that many patients had been evacuated from the two hospitals. At Brownfields, Maine, a fire on a 15-mile front destroyed 250 homes and also schools, the town meeting house and other public buildings, a parsonage and general store. Some Brownfield residences were saved by a man who drove a bulldozer 80 miles from Tamworth, New Hampshire. When he reached Brownfield he turned up furrows of earth round the first houses he came to. OTHER FIRES . Forest fires flared up elsewhere in the United States, including New York, New Jersey and Michigan, and ranged up north from Maine into Canada's New Brunswick. Forests in parts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia were ; ordered to be closed. , The tibttest areas of Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire took on a combat zone appearance when National Guardsmen and members of the American Legion joined in aiding families fleeing from the blackened, smoke-hung 6 stfeets of ghost towns.