The Wooden Nutmeg

This is a fire that plays an important part in this blog, which you can read in my welcome post.

This post is not an exhaustive history, but the highlights of some articles I already have in my archives.  Someone mentioned this fire on another forum today, which inspired me to look at my notes again.

By the third day of the fire, some 3,000 men had been put to work on the fire with 400 more soldiers enroute from Niantic and Fort Devens.   It had already destroyed 13 homes.

New York Times article, 1 May 1942

The perils of the fire fighters were undergoing were reflected in countless stories.  One of these was told by Corporal Ralph Walsh of Woonsocket, who had become cut off from his fellow-Guardsmen and was badly hurt before being rescued.

He purposely bogged himself in a swamp when a raging burst of crown fire threatened to bombard him with flaming branches.

“I’ve been a woodsmen for a good many years,” he said, “But I never saw any fire as swift as this one.  The lieutenant sent me for water and I guess I got lost because of the smoke.  The next thing I knew, flames were rushing toward me in the underbrush.  I started running ahead of them.  It was terrible.”

“But you haven’t heard anything yet.  I happened to look up in the air and there above me the flames were leaping from top to top among the pines.  I had to keep going.  Finally I saw an opening in the woods.  I made for it and it was a swamp.  I waded through the mud and that’s the last thing I remember.

New York Times, 3 May 1942

This brief article from the Times said firefighters in Killingly (the town north of Sterling) controlled one fire that had burned one mile wide and three miles long.

Providence, R.I., May 3
With at least three forest fires still burning, although the worst was believed definitely over, Rhode Island State Police recorded today for the first time their convition that the outbeaks, which have spread damage in a sixty-square-mile area since Thursday, were incendiary.

New York Times, 4 May 1942

Hartford, Conn.  May 14 (AP)
The Connecticut and Rhode Island State Police announced jointly tonight the arrest of a man they said admitted starting forest fires which swept a wide area in both States two weeks ago, causing damage estimated as high as three million dollars.
…
Edward Francis LaCasse, 30, of Plainfield…was being held in Kingston, R.I. tonight and a … bench warrant charging arson would be sought in Superior Court at Putnam, Conn., tomorrow.
Arsonist Arrested

Justice moved swiftly in those days — only 8 days later he had been convicted and sent to prison.  He admitted guilt to lighting the Connecticut fire, although it seems he didn’t admit guilt for fires lit in Rhode Island.

I believe (confirmation from two sources now — my father and this post, but no news articles yet that I have seen) that three Rhode Island firefighters died on these fires in a burnover incident when their truck stalled in heavy smoke.  If that is true, it could explain his reluctance to admit guilt specifically to the fire which killed those firefighters.

Putnam, May 22.–(Special..)–Edward F. LaCasse, 30, volunteer fireman, of Plainfield, was taken to State’s Prison in Wethersfield Friday afternoon to begin serving a term of seven to 15 years imposed on arson charges in Windham County Superior Court here earlier…