Last time, I described hurricane Carol, using Boothbay Register articles and a few of my memories. Carol arrived in Maine on September 1, 1954, making a huge mess of waterborne property such as boats, floats, and runways. On the other hand, Edna, which hit here about September 11, 1954, caused more trouble on land. Boat owners, fresh from Carol's recent visit, took action in advance to haul their boats or move them to sheltered areas. Edna's seas were as heavy as Carol's, but caused havoc for a shorter time. Instead of the 40 or more rescued by the Damariscove Coast Guard station boat and workboat earlier, less than five were towed by them during Edna.

Wholesale felled trees and Civil Defense

According to the September 17, 1954 Register, Carol "vented most of its fury on land, bowling over uncounted thousands of trees and causing widespread damage to streets and highways because of the record rainfall." Those thousands of trees felled by Carol and Edna lay in opposite directions, with Edna's overlaying Carol's victims. The winds ranged to 75 miles an hour, and seven inches of torrential rain fell. A "tremendous" tree was uprooted at my East Boothbay next door neighbors, the Solers. The roots brought up the water main and snapped it, sending a geyser into the air. I don't remember that dramatic sight at all though I should.

Civil Defense was active: using Explorer Scouts as runners and Carl Watson's short-wave radio to communication with headquarters, manning the phones at town offices, and policing streets and storm drains. Volunteers manned stationary and roving canteens to bring coffee and snacks to the linemen and other workers. For this hurricane, the water system's generator, which went to the gas station to pump gas during Carol, went to Watson for his radio when the power failed.

Of the nine men who assisted the police, two Harbor men are still with us: Bob Barter and Harry Pinkham. After the wind and water "wrenched open" the footbridge, Harry and four other men got a rope on it, pulled it shut, and tied it in place. No mail came for a few days because the train tracks to Wiscasset from Portland were washed out, but eventually the mail was trucked in. The phone company sent 360 Michigan men by rail to the state of Maine, as well as two trains of flatcars with 220 fully-equipped trucks. Some of those out-of-staters came here.

Washouts, roof ripped off

After motorized diggers and dump trucks came along, the towns ran roads right through wetlands they formerly bypassed. So the expected places were totally flooded and/or washed out: the Harbor's Meadow stretch; East Boothbay was cut off from the Harbor by the road washing out at the Big Hills which became a 1,500-foot wide lake east to west; and 75 feet of pavement dropped eight feet near the Route 27 Edgecomb-Boothbay town line. The Harbor had seven other road washouts, while Boothbay had 31, including three totaling 1,300 feet at the north end of Barters Island.

Of the region businesses, Rice Brothers shipyard in East Boothbay was hit hardest with damage. The big doors of the main shop were blown in, allowing the wind to rip off the roof and part of the east wall. Two of the Navy personnel boats in process were destroyed. Other Rice buildings were also damaged.

Seawater spray flew more than a mile and a half inland in both hurricane Carol and Edna; even windows at Boothbay Center were coated with salt. Also during both hurricanes all the trees close enough to the shore to be hit with the salt spray turned brown.

Runaway pulpwood traps a boat

Pulpwood was still being driven down the rivers to mills then, and I remember there'd been a big log boom break up the Kennebec. Thousands of four-foot logs originating in Waterville washed up on the shore, all dabbed on their ends with different colors to identify their owners. Such pulpwood was a common sight along the shore back then, but not the quantity Edna provided. Townspeople dragged the wood home for firewood and other uses. My family did so from Grimes Cove. I had a rope I normally used in playing cowboys and Indians with Gary and Raymond Soler next door; it came in handy to rope and drag pulpwood up to the car.

The hull of George Lowden's sightseeing boat Viking, in the Kennebec on a run to Gardiner without passengers, was attacked and “peppered” by the escaped logs. Then she was caught in “the tangled mass of boom” and drifted helplessly down past Hallowell with the men on board in fear for their lives. Pressure on the tangled, writhing mass of logs eventually shifted and they were able to force logs out and away from the boat to escape to Boothbay. Booming logs down the river was finally prohibited in the 1970s as environmental concerns mounted — about 12,000 cords of sunken pulpwood polluted the Kennebec each year in multiple ways. The fish certainly preferred no boomed logs.

According to NOAA’s 60th anniversary article on 1954’s major U.S. hurricanes, “hurricanes Carol, Edna, and Hazel [it headed for the Great Lakes] convinced Congress to allocate additional funds for the Weather Bureau to assign aircraft for the specific purpose of carrying out scientific research into hurricanes.” Those fall 1954 storms had a big impact, and Carol's strength has still not been surpassed in New England.

Do you have region stories or photos of Carol or Edna? Come in the museum at 72 Oak Street in Boothbay Harbor between 10 a.m. and 2 on Saturdays, or call 207-633-0820 to let us know, or email brhs@gwi.net.