The Fires
After a wet spring, in which the months of April, May and June were inundated with rainy weather, the climate turned to drought condition in mid July 1947. By the end of September, the ground was extremely dry. State and local officials, recognizing the dangers of the dry conditions, began implementing preventative measures such as informing the public to have their chimneys cleaned. By the second week of October, the state was in a Class 4 state of danger, meaning: "high state of inflammability." Fire watch towers, normally closed at the end of September, were reopened by the State Forest Service. By October 19, many communities in Maine breathed air filled with a smokey haze and the smell of burning wood.
Reports of small fires in woods began coming in to the Forest Service on October 7. These early fires burned in Portland, Bowdoin and Wells. Being 30 miles apart from each other, these three fires illustrated the danger. After this, reports of fires poured in, and by October 16, 20 separate fires were burning in the state.
Read more about this topic: Great Fires Of 1947
Famous quotes containing the word fires:
“Put in hours and hours of planning, figure everything down to the last detail, then what? Burglar alarms start going off all over the place for no sensible reason. A gun fires of its own accord and a man is shot. And a broken-down old house no good for anything but chasing kids has to trip over us. Blind accidents. What can you do against blind accidents?”
—Ben Maddow (1909–1992)
“Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)