{"id":83,"date":"2010-03-22T18:21:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T18:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/150years\/october-1947-the-fire-of-1947\/"},"modified":"2019-10-03T14:23:38","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T18:23:38","slug":"fire-of-1947","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/months\/october\/fire-of-1947\/","title":{"rendered":"October 1947: The Great Fires of 1947"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Published<\/a>

Published in the Oct. 29, 1947, Bates Student, this photo is said to show Bates student volunteers fighting the 1947 fires in Maine. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

In late October 1947, more than 200 fires in southern and coastal\u00a0Maine burned 205,678 acres, leveling nine towns and destroying more than 1,200 homes and seasonal cottages.<\/p>\n

It was the worst natural disaster in Maine history.<\/p>\n

At Bates, nearly 300 male students, about 40 percent of the student body of 767, volunteered for firefighting duty and were dispatched to various communities by a state disaster committee.\u00a0“Since last Monday [Oct. 20], from 50 to 100 men have left Bates campus every day for various danger sections in the state,” The Bates Student<\/em> reported on Oct. 29, including Kennebunk, Bowdoinham, Cornish, Kezar Falls, and Richmond.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, female students conducted watches on campus and at Thorncrag, raked leaves away from residence halls, and collected clothing donations for the Red Cross.<\/p>\n

As the fires abated late in the month, President Phillips said he’d heard nothing but praise about the students’ efforts. Quoted in The Bates Student<\/em>, he said that “the job done by Bates men is superior to anything yet.”<\/p>\n

\"Volunteer<\/a>

Volunteer firefighting by Bates students was “superior” said President Charles Phillips in a front page story in the Oct. 29, 1947, issue of The Bates Student<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Here are three accounts of the Great Fires of 1947,\u00a0two written contemporaneously and one looking back after 50-plus years.<\/p>\n

‘Gaunt chimneys and smoldering foundations’<\/h3>\n

William Dill ’51 describes firefighting in Richmond<\/a> in this edited excerpt from a letter to his parents back home in Edgeworth, Pa., dated Oct. 24, 1947.<\/p>\n

In Richmond, he wrote, “we could see where the fire had already passed: gaunt chimneys and smoldering foundations of completely burned houses.”<\/p>\n

‘A mile-long chain of flame’<\/h3>\n

Robert Foster ’50 wrote a first-person account, “<\/a><\/strong>Volunteers fight forest blaze; Kennebunk crew is one of many,”<\/a> for The Bates Student <\/em>of Oct. 29, 1947.<\/p>\n

At one point during his firefighting, Foster looked up to see “a mile-long chain of flame [that] cast a cherry glow into the sky.<\/p>\n

‘We were turned into fire wardens’<\/h3>\n

The late Elizabeth Thomes Hobbs ’51 wrote a more lyrical remembrance of October 1947<\/a> a few years ago, recalling how she drew the dreaded pre-dawn fire watch.<\/p>\n

“Before the fires,” she writes, “had I ever known how much I valued that last hour of sleep before the day\u2019s duties?”<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2035,"parent":80,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-83","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2057,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83\/revisions\/2057"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/80"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/150-years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}