Wings Neck

Wings Neck doesn't have an apostrophe, and I checked more than once. It's a peninsula, which is actually a typo away from being a dirty term describing "a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland."

As near as I can tell from the Wikipedia, the big difference between a Peninsula and a Cape is that a Cape manifests itself as a marked change in the trend of the coastline. Essentially, Bourne to Provincetown is a Cape via her right angle hook, while the more Mexico-aligned Baja is a peninsula.

I think that Cape Cod is technically two Capes, with one running from the mainland to Chatham, and the Outer Cape sort of caping off of the Cape.

Keep in mind that I majored in Accounting when I am telling you all this stuff about Geography. I actually confuse Geography with Geology and even Geometry now and then, which is why I am rarely obtuse with people.

Wings Neck is a notable point where Buzzards Bay begins to narrow into the Cape Cod Canal. It is across the Buzz from Stony Point in Wareham. It's not as narrow as the Mashnee Neck/Codman Point bottleneck, but it's pretty narrow. If you've sailed north into the Cape Cod Canal, you passed Wings Neck on your starboard side.

It sort of sticks out from the mainland like a wing, hence the name. I'm guessing, and there could be some guy named Wing who may have a legitimate grievance with me.

The area was of regional importance before the Cape Cod Canal was dug out. The swampy area was rich in Iron, and the Pocasset Iron Company was powerful enough to greatly increase shipping traffic. Shipping into Wareham and Bourne/Sandwich had also increased heavily. Wings Neck merited a lighthouse by 1849. The original light was 50 feet above the water, and it cost a look-at-how-they-spend $3,251.

The first keeper, Edward Doty Lawrence, ran it almost uninterrupted through 1877. He was briefly removed in 1854 for belonging to the wrong political party. His daughter married the Keeper who followed him. John Maxim, who both replaced and preceded EDL as Keeper, was killed at Gettysburg.

Other notable Keepers were George and William Howard. The Howard brothers were noted lifesavers, and they saved 37 lives in their time running Wings Neck. One of the reasons that a U-Boat never attacked Bourne is that the Germans feared retribution from the badass Howard brothers.

It has a very lengthy history of lightkeeper's wives being the assistant keepers, doing the shift while hubby slept. At least one keeper's wife is famous for saying a prayer over her husband's newly-dead corpse, and then going up to run the light and clang the bell before the town doctor had pronounced him dead.

There was an 1878 fire that led to the 1889 construction of a new light, which had all that fancy stuff like a 1000 pound fog bell. They even floated an assistant keeper's house across the Buzz from Mattapoisett in 1923. It went from a fixed to a flashing light in 1928, and converted to electricity in 1934. This light was 44 feet above the water, and was visible for 12 miles at sea.

Wings Neck was once docked at by the US presidential yacht,Mayflower. The keeper, Wallace Eldredge, did a 21 gun salute with the fog bell for President Warren Harding. 

As a private residence, it once played host to the Von Trapp family of The Sound Of Music fame. Since former President Grover Cleveland vacationed in Bourne for many years and was an avid fisherman, he was most likely very familiar with Wings Neck. This is a ridiculous amount of clout for a literal backwater area where maybe 500 families live now.

Maps from vintage times show Wings Neck as a hazard to navigation, and it only got worse when the Canal traffic started floating by.

The lighthouse ran from 1889-1945, when it was deemed unnecessary following the construction of the Cleveland Ledge light. They then put up this Cape Cod Canal monitoring station in the picture above.

The monitoring station is the tallest thing around until you get to the Bourne Bridge. It has radar and CCTV monitoring. If you were doing some Love Boat as you were sailing up the Canal, they probably saw you. They may even have film of the act, which is why I never intend to run for President.

The station is essential to the flow of traffic through the Canal, and helps to prevent such nightmare scenarios as "LNG tanker collides with munitions ship as orphans and puppies watch from within the blast radius." Who needs to see that, right?

The hexagonal (you are either impressed that I know that word, or you know i just made it up) lighthouse still stands, and it is connected to a lovely 3 bedroom cottage by a charming breezeway.

It went up for sale, and is now a private residence. Those private residents (the Flanagan family bought it for $13K and change in 1947) use the place as a rental. You can stay there for the following rates.

Winter: January 4 – May 3 $2,500 per week

Spring: May 3 – June 14 $3,300 per week

Summer: June 14 – September 6 $4,500 per week

Fall: September 6 – December 31 $3,500 per week

Now, that's some good scratch, but it's worth it to live in a lighthouse for a week. You always say that you want to live in a lighthouse, and that's what it costs. It's a bargain, trust me. Go stay at that other lighthouse if you don't believe me.

There are few better places to watch a good storm from. If you loved ship-watching as a kid, you owe this place to yourself. It's also a top-notch Buddha Spot. If some people I know lived there, it would have so much smoke coming out of the top, Catholics would think there was a new Pope.

I don't know if they still have the bell, or if they let you ring it if they do. I was basically trespassing for these shots.

The Cape Cod Canal Foliage Project

Quint wasn't talking about Cape Cod when he laid down the facts in Jaws, but he may as well have been. We are a summer community, and we need summer dollars, or we'll be on the welfare all winter... something to that effect.

However, money grows green in all seasons. Why not make some Autumn money? Does money really grow on trees?

Autumn money is sort of up our alley. We're the Thanksgiving ground zero for America. We have quaint little cranberry bogs scattered all about. As long as you don't go swimming, those beaches are fine on a warm autumn day, even in November.

We also have foliage. Now, when you think of foliage, you think of New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and even the Berkshires. You don't really think Cape Cod.

Middleboro certainly doesn't think so, and they planted this tree to prove it to you.

That's a shame, because we're the last region of New England to experience peak foliage. Maine trees are bare when we're just getting to the height of our season. Cape Cod, if you look at a foliage map, peaks right around when a Kentucky-Alabama swath is peaking, and those states don't do foliage like New England does.

We should be better known for it. Everyone who saw the beautiful foliage shots from New Hampshire on the news, and who then said "We should drive out in the country and see some foliage," but who then procrastinated... those people should be looking at Cape Cod as a Last Resort.

People aren't stupid, so there must be good reasons as to why we don't get Vermont's autumnal swagger. For starters, we lack the forest cover that northern New England has. We also have the wrong sort of trees.

That second problem can be fixed.

Trees drop acorns and so forth, and those can be harvested. Plant them in the ground, and they'll grow a version of the tree that they fell from. Come autumn, those trees will put off the same color that their parents did.

It's so simple, it pretty much takes care of itself.

I called a few tree farms, and the big difference a tree would see in Massachusetts as opposed to New Hampshire is that they would go into seasonal color changes later. Trees that turn in early October in Falmouth, Maine would have to wait until November in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Let that fact roll around in your head a bit as we figure out how to make money off of this.

Cape Cod is a series of tourist towns, and the weakest link in the chain is Bourne.

Bourne is very nice when compared to Fitchburg or Holyoke, but it's in last place as far as Cape Cod tourism goes. Bourne has nice people living there and has a lot to offer, but we have Bay where everyone else has Ocean, so we sort of lag behind the other Cape towns when it comes to tourism.

There's not much we can do about the Bay, but the Cape Cod Canal is another animal entirely.

The Cape Cod Canal is an ocean river, The canal is 7 miles long, and it is framed on each side by a wonderful bike path. These paths are framed by a thick row of trees.

These trees tend to be pine, Pine is lovely, but it doesn't do much during Autumn beyond dropping pine needles into that gap between your windshield and the car hood. There's nothing wrong with pine, but no one is driving out from New York City to look at it.

So, we have several problems: a weak sister of a Cape Cod town, a poor foliage reputation, a short tourist season and a boring pine Canal.

If we could somehow wipe that slate clean, even if it takes a few generations, we could maybe get this town back on a payin' basis.

That's why we should do whatever it takes to plant ten thousand acorns along the Cape Cod Canal. Not just any acorns, either. We should take acorns from trees that produce spectacular foliage.

I won't make it to the mountain top with you, but once those acorns become trees, we'll have the premier foliage display in Massachusetts and perhaps New England.

It's all there for the taking.

New Hampshire and Vermont have it easy. They didn't plant those trees, and they only still have those trees because not enough people want to move to Vermont to warrant clearing space. They don't deserve that foliage.

Bourne, on the other hand, would aggressively select their trees. We'd be Mother Nature on steroids, ruthlessly saying which tree will grow where. With the tree huggers appeased by the planting of ten thousand trees. we'd be free to play God yet again with the Cape Cod Canal area.

If the right people (and I'm not one of them, I become useless as anything other than a laborer after the Idea Stage) are running this, we could have a ridiculous run of foliage down each side of an underutilized Canal.

Planned by experts, planted in rows fronting the Canal and dropping acorns of their own each year, the Canal Forest would both own and pwn the rest of New England as a foliage destination.

Bourne would then have some nice assets to work with.

We'd have a sweet location, maybe 25% of the drive someone might have to take to get to the Maine foliage. We'd have foliage that would kick in during the run-up to Thanksgiving, which also draws tourists into the region. We'd have hotels, gas stations and all that other stuff that leeches money out of tourists.

Most importantly, we'd have our ridiculous multi-colored Canal. The canal has plenty of parking, would feature easy access, boasts of long-but-not-too-long walks and would look like New Hampshire would look if it were planned.

You could probably sell boat tours of this new foliage run, with the added bonus of three bridges and one power plant. I think they already have Canal foliage boat tours, but this would become a larger venture if our Canal looks like the Mohawk Trail wishes it looked.

 This would merge nicely with our present Tourist Season.

The majority of the tourists leave after Labor Day.

The old people are smart enough to do Cape tourism after Labor Day, and they help push the season into October.

A foliage explosion in the Canal would push that season into maybe mid-November (you can still see foliage driving around Cape Cod today)...

... where it would merge with the Pilgrim/Wampanoag/Thanksgiving connection, which we should also figure out an angle from which we could extract profit from exploiting it.

We just need the ten thousand acorns.

How to get those ten thousand acorns is the question we need to solve. I have no intention of standing up at a town meeting with this idea, as I'm not tree-savvy enough to answer the questions that citizens would rightfully ask if something that smells like Tax is spoken of.

I have no idea how much ten thousand trees would cost. I'll try to find out before we publish, as I tend to work during the Witching Hour. Hopefully, this section between the pictures will be bigger tomorrow.

UPDATE: I bothered a few people, including Stephen Davis and Chuck Teravainen.

Maple saplings go $20-30 or so, live 100 years, grow 6-12 inches a year, and need about 20-25 yards of space. Wisteria is $20, and Dogwood goes $15. Aspen is $18-29. Water and fertilizer would be needed for the first few years.

These prices are awesome if you have a big yard and plan to hold onto the house. If you have a 7 mile Canal to fill 2 sides of at $15-30 every 20 yards, that adds up to... like...uhm... carry the two..... a lot of money.

It's not too hard to grow trees from acorns. It's much cheaper. We can get the kids to do the labor for nada.

One reason that I'm not worried about town meetings and how much trees or acorns cost is that I have no intention of buying acorns.

I was never in the Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts myself, but I always thought of Scouting as an admirable pursuit. I assume that they spend a lot of their time in the woods, doing woodsy things.

I'd challenge the little SOBs. Give the world an eco-friendly, cash-grabbing project that shows off the beauty of nature, and help along a struggling resort town in the process.

I don't know how many Scouts there are on Cape Cod, but if a hundred of them could be trained to identify acorns from the proper foliage trees, would it merit a few bus trips worth of cash to send them up into the Enemy States to each steal one hundred of their acorns?

One trip to New Hampshire for supplies, another to Bourne for planting. Train the DPW people well enough that they don't cut down saplings. I'm not above using specially-trained prison labor, but residents may disagree.

If the Scouts won't do it, each Cape Cod high school should be coerced into sending their kids up to gather acorns.

Yes, every school or Scout troop on Cape Cod. I sit through a lot of traffic so that Orleans and Yarmouth Port can get their tourists, and we want some payback in the form of acorns. Before those brats get their diplomas, they pay the Gatekeeper fifty acorns.

Some of that cash will bleed into their towns too, as people who walk the Foliage Canal might decide to trek down 6A, or maybe watch the sharks kill the seals in Chatham. Its win/win, unless you're a seal.

Someone should be coordinating this effort. It's a tough sell, because we won't see the payoff in our lifetimes, but the kids will. When those trees sprout, we'll be in business.

For the bother of gathering and planting a few acorns, we'll be the most easily accessible foliage spot for what I'd gather is a large % of the leaf-peeping population.

Would you rather drive 6 hours into the Vermont wilderness and amble down endless East Bufu roads looking for bursts of foliage, or would you rather blast down to Bourne in an hour and take a leisurely stroll through what would essentially be a bursting-with-color foliage theme park set by an ocean river?

Bourne, who lost their end o' summer cash cow when the Scallop Festival skipped town, would slowly evolve into the Autumn anchorman of Cape Cod.

New Hampshire won't know what hit them.

Bourne Hurricane Primer II: Evacuation

In yesterday's article, we talked about how Bourne would suffer from inundation in a hurricane. As you may have learned, it will flood heavily. If a bit of water gets in the basement, it is only a minor irritant, no big deal in the great scheme of things. If ocean water is getting into the chimney, that's a whole other animal. A big hurricane could render large sections of Bourne uninhabitable.

Unless you have a boat and even if you do, you probably want to make plans that involve fleeing before you can surf into someone's second story window. Chance favors the prepared mind.

I'm not here to say that I know better than you and that you should move when I say you should. I grew up in a coastal neighborhood, and always resented authorities who get all bossy and peremptory about beach conditions to people who live there. Ideally, the police would be asking the residents for their advice. Someone living in Monument Beach knows more about when and how Monument Beach floods than some rookie cop or some Bourne town reporter who might live in Bournedale. He even knows more than people from areas that flood worse, like Scituate or Florida.

What I plan to do is read the Cape Cod Emergency Traffic Plan and look over the FEMA Evacuation Zone Maps for Bourne, Massachusetts. I can then turn 15 pages of text into one lengthy blog entry, and leave you with the resources to find out additional information.

I could waste a lot of time defining the mission statement of the CCETP, but someone has already done that:

The Cape Cod Emergency Traffic Plan (CCETP) has been developed to facilitate the
egress of a high volume of traffic from Cape Cod in the event of a hurricane, particularly
during peak tourist season. Although developed for a hurricane scenario, this ‘All
Hazards’ Plan has been designed to be utilized in a number of emergency situations.
The plan’s main goals are to ensure the safety of the community in the event of
destructive weather or other hazards requiring the orderly but rapid movement of
motorists off Cape Cod and the Islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard; and
prepare for the temporary sheltering of displaced persons resulting from the evacuation
of potential flood areas and motorists unable to exit the Cape due to the closure of the
Bourne and Sagamore Bridges.

That's a tall order. Let's see how they are going to handle that, shall we? 

The CCETP was born after Hurricane Edouard's approach in 1996. It was five years after Hurricane Bob, and people fled the Cape in droves. Traffic on Route 6 was backed up 18-40 miles (Wikipedia said 18, FEMA said 40), to the Orleans rotary. Eddie stayed offshore, but the spectre of him slamming into a 30 mile convoy of trapped, car-bound refugees was too scary to ignore.

FEMA then gathered up all of the serious people to craft this plan, which I now have the 2013 version of.

It is not an evacuation plan. FEMA feels it is unlikely that an event would occur that would require the evacuation of the whole Cape. It is more of a plan to manage traffic in the event that low-lying areas of Cape Cod had to be evacuated. They anticipate that many coastal residents may just move inland a bit, utilize the emergency shelters offered, or just get off of Cape Cod before traffic emergency conditions go into effect.

I didn't see anything in the CCETP related to an accident at the Plymouth nuclear power plant. Unless the rumors of them closing the bridges to keep Cape Codders out of the way of Plymouth residents as they flee are true, a nuclear event would be a full-Cape evacuation, even if they didn't order it. I'm not sure if they have a plan in place for that, I'll try to find out.

It is also important to remember that the Governor of Massachusetts can order a traffic ban in blizzards. He's probably not above doing it in a hurricane, either. This adds a get-out-while-you-can aspect to any evacuation consideration.

FEMA and MEMA set this CCETP up in easy-to-follow blocs, and I'll work along their outline.

The concept of the CCETP is based upon the need to eliminate the causes of
congestion and keep traffic flowing in the area of the Bourne and Sagamore Bridges
and the main arteries leading up to them, Routes 6 & 28. This will be accomplished
primarily by the application of four traffic pattern alterations that:

1) Prohibit off-Cape access to Routes 6 & 28 at the base of both bridges;

2) Control access to certain exits for the Scenic Highway, Sandwich Road
and along Route 6 to limit traffic attempting to merge into the main stream
of off-Cape traffic;

3) Create flexibility in the opening and closing of exits by the MSP in order
to expedite off-Cape traffic flow across the Sagamore and Bourne
Bridges; and 

4) Detour traffic to alternate roadways in order to reduce congestion.  

Whuh-whuh-what?? That's a pretty heavy opening salvo. 

That going-on-Cape ban will break up families if Mom or Dad can't get home from work quickly enough. I'm not a cop- I'm kind of the opposite of one, actually- but I think I can speak for them when I say that the I-gotta-get-home-and-rescue-the-schnauzer argument for being allowed to cross the bridges during these sort of bans would be poorly met. Even if the cops were allowing it on a case-by-case basis, you would be going to the back of a very long line, and would eventually be telling your story to a man who has probably heard 1000 better ones in the last hour.

#2 looks like a ban on entering Route 6 at the Christmas Tree Shop on-ramp, which is actually a reasonable idea being proposed for peak-period non-emergency closings by no less than state rep Randy Hunt. That also looks like a ban on dipping out of the Bourne Capeside rotary and using Sandwich Road to get to the Sagamore Bridge.

Sagamore residents may find themselves in a situation where they get 50 yards from the bridge as they flee the storm, only to have to turn around at the blocked on-ramp, crawl through the masses on 6A and 130 back to Exit 2, and try again.

#3 seems to me to be a legal justification for the MSP (Massachusetts State Police, they have an appendix for acronyms in the FEMA report) to close Exits 2-6 westbound on Route 6 to keep people off of low-lying Route 6A. There is also some Route 28 stuff, but we'll get to that with the map talk.

The decisions to do this are made in several stages. The stage of Preparedness is ongoing, months and even years before a storm. The approach of the storm sets in motion the Stand-By Stage, where the wheels of the emergency response are set in motion. If all goes poorly enough, we get the Decision Stage, where the authorities activate the CCETP. This becomes the Execution Stage, where the roadblocks and detours start going up.

It is here that the authorities:

1) Prohibit access to Routes 6 & 28 at the southern, Cape side, base of both bridges;

2) Control access to the Scenic Highway, Sandwich Road and Route 6 to limit 

traffic attempting to merge into the main stream of off-Cape traffic;

3) Allow MSP flexibility in the opening and closing of exits in order to expedite off-Cape traffic flow across the bridges

4) Detour traffic to alternate roadways in order to reduce congestion.
 

The Execution Stage has two components, Traffic Operations (Phase I) and Sheltering Operations (Phase II).

I'm going to cut-n-paste a lot, so bear with me. You want to be hearing this from Them rather than from Me anyhow. It works better for everyone.

Execution Stage: Traffic Operations (Phase I)

PHASE I

Off-Cape Traffic heading west on Route 6W to Route 3 can proceed over the
Sagamore Bridge flyover and continue on Route 3N at exit 1B.

Off-Cape Traffic heading west on Route 6W traveling to the Bourne Bridge to access
routes 25/195/495 will have multiple options:

a. Traffic can detour off Route 6W at Exit 2 in Sandwich, travel South on Route 130, enter the Joint Base Cape Cod (JBCC) (formerly Massachusetts Military Reservation) at the Convoy Gate and follow the detour through Otis AFB and Camp Edwards to Route 28N at the Otis Rotary. Traffic then travels north to the Bourne Bridge and Routes 25/195/495;

or,

b. Traffic can choose to disregard the detour on Rte 6W
at Exit 2 above, and follow Route 6W to Route 3N
where they can detour at Exit 7 in Plymouth and take
Route 44W to the Route 44 rotary in Middleboro and
access Route 495. Traffic can travel Route 495 North
to access Routes 24, 95 and other points north; or
Route 495 South to access Routes 25, 195 or other
points south.

or,

c. As an option, the Massachusetts State Police will
monitor traffic flow and may open or close detours as
necessary. This includes the option of opening the
Route 6 exit ramp (Scenic Highway) between exits 1A
and 1B after the Sagamore Bridge. That exit will
open or close as directed by the MSP in order to
minimize congestion.

Local traffic traveling on Route 6W can utilize Exit 1A after the Sagamore Bridge for
local traffic only. No access to Rte 28/25 via Scenic Highway.

Off-Cape Traffic heading north on Route 28 to Routes 25/195/495 can travel over the
Bourne Bridge and continue to those routes.

The Cape-side Bourne Bridge Rotary will be blocked to prevent cross-rotary
traffic. Plan allows only north-south access to and from the Bridge via Route 28, and
local traffic only via Trowbridge and Sandwich Roads. 

The big Take from this is that you will be detoured through the military base, but not and I repeat NOT via a forced detour. This would be the ideal way for someone in Sandwich who had to get to 495 to go. The first (1A) mainland exit off of Sagamore would be limited to people who could flash Bourne/Sandwich/Plymouth IDs. Drivers hoping to use the Scenic Highway to cut from Sagamore to 28/25 will get denied at the goal line.

Again, we point out that the Cape-side Bourne Bridge rotary will cease to be circular in the CCETP. If you approach it from Route 28, your only option is straight over. Traffic will be allowed to use Sandwich and Trowbridge Roads only if it is local.

But wait... there's more!

Off-Cape traffic heading north on Route 28 which needs to get to the Sagamore Bridge to go North of Route 3 should either:
a) Access Route 151 in Falmouth to Rte. 28 to Rte. 130
to Route 6;

or,

b) Traffic can cross the Bourne Bridge, follow Route
25N, to Route 495N and take detour at Exit 5 (Route
18/44) and follow Route 44E to Route 3 north or
south. 

Local traffic traveling on Route 28N can use Waterhouse Rd. to access shelters at
Bourne Middle School and Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School.

Local traffic traveling on Route 28N can cross the Bourne Bridge and use Exit 2 on
Rte. 25W, to access local shelters and local destinations in Buzzards Bay and
Wareham.

Exit 3 (rte. 6) on Rte. 25W will be closed and the Scenic Highway will not be
accessible from the Mainland-side Bourne Rotary in Buzzards Bay, in order to eliminate
cross rotary traffic. 

This is a worst case scenario plan, meaning that it implies a direct hit from a strong storm at peak high tides is necessary to gain the inundation potential and evacuation necessity we're kicking around here.

Phase II involves an even worse-than-worst case scenario where the Bourne and Sagamore Bridges have been closed, most likely due to winds getting past 70 mph. You don't want to be up on a bridge and have this happen.

1. Both bridges must now be closed to all traffic.

2. Rte 6W will be closed at Exit 2 in Sandwich, and Rte 28N will be closed at the Otis Rotary.

3. All traffic between those points and the bridges will be allowed to cross.
The bridges will be closed when this residual traffic has passed.

4. Any motorists still on the road will then have the option of going to designated emergency parking areas in the JBCC and being shuttled to shelter on the JBCC, or seeking their own shelter elsewhere, until the storm passes. 

If you see a block-the-road sized DPW or Army vehicle being moved into place at the Otis Rotary, stomp the gas and get into that last mix of escape-the-Cape cars. Otherwise, you'll be sleeping at the same base they were going to stick those El Salvador kids in.

It will make great differences in the quality of your immediate future if you drive inland until you find a Motel 6 with electricity and vacancies than if you crowd in with 20000 people on a military base. You'll be happy, the family who got your cot at the shelter will be happy, and I- having helped the process along with my work here- will be happy.

If you're skipping through the article and just taking a quick look to plot your getaway, we remind you that this is Phase II of the plan, and Phase I involves blocking off Sandwich Road and the Scenic Highway.

Tow trucks will be in place to move disabled vehicles, and shuttles/parking will be provided for those still on the road when the bridges close. The tow trucks are already contracted for this potential event. They will just tow you off the road, not to your house in Quincy or anything. I can't say if or what they would be charging.

This is the nightmare, as neither you nor me nor the government knows how many people will be trapped behind enemy lines when the storm shuts down the bridges. They don't know how much water they'll need, how much food they'll need, how many beds they'll be short by, how many buses they'll need to move refugees, how long people will have to stay at the base, and a zillion other variables.

Maybe you won't have to worry about that. How do you know which areas of town authorities will be evacuating? For that matter, how do they know?

See below:

Doesn't that look like fun?

Here's how to read this map up above. The maroon areas represent places that would have evacuations (I'm not sure if these are mandatory or voluntary) in a Category 1 storm. The yellow areas are ones that would require evacuation in Category 2 storms. There are also other colors for stronger storms, but our maps seem to just cover up to Category 2. The other colors may just be for Southern states.

You'll notice that Sagamore Beach has it fairly nice, as does Sagamore itself. Just evacuate those beaches, and clear out along the Canal. Bournedale is like a hockey team, with barely any color at all. Just stay off the Canal in Bournedale, although I'll add right here that those colors on the map do NOT represent freshwater flooding potential. I looked it up and everything.

Bourne and Wareham are the very head of the body of water that we call Buzzards Bay, and the village that we call Buzzards Bay is smack dab in the path of the heaviest storm surge. Drive by the Buzzards Bay fire station if you wish to see a sign showing the water level in the 1938 storm, but I can save you the trouble by saying that it is about 4-5 feet high.

All of Buzzards Bay and most of East Wareham/Onset will have to be evacuated in the event of even a minor storm. This guaran-damn-tees that the roads will be jammed before the real Cape Codders get to the bridges.

Crossing the bridges is a bad move. Bourne Village, Pocasset, Gray Gables, Mashnee, Monument Beach and Cataumet all have areas that would have to be evacuated, many of them densely populated. Evacuation will be life-or-death for people in places like Mashnee.

As you can see from the snippets of Falmouth, Sandwich, Mashpee and Barnstable on the map, other towns will also be clearing people out in large numbers. One of the benefits of living in Bourne is that you get a little bit of a head start on the rest of the Cape Codders when it comes time for the quittin' and splittin'. The towns beyond Bourne and Wareham heading inland aren't evacuating. You also get first crack at hotels inland.

There isn't a map for getting back onto Cap[e Cod after a major storm, but we'll try to dig up some information on that for our next Hurricane Primer. We're thinking that Primer III may be History, and IV will be Preparations.

In closing, we'd like to remind you that informed people are likely to make better decisions, and those who make better decisions have a better chance of surviving in an emergency.

If you're reading this article, we definitely want you alive, so that you perform more site visits for us. We also want you alive for reasons of professional pride, i.e. "Well, at least the people who listened to me were OK." We also want you safe and sound in a not-overtaxing-emergency-services sense, and we want you alive in a friendly, neighborly way.

Bourne Hurricane Season Primer I: Inundation

                                Run To The Hills...

We got ourselves a look at the current evacuation zone and hurricane inundation maps for Bourne, and the results are quite frightening. The Cape Cod Emergency Traffic Plan isn't exactly comforting, either.

Cape Codders often consider Bourne to be almost inland when compared to a Nantucket or even an Orleans. Heck, we're technically on two bays, we're not even open ocean. Cape Cod itself is our barrier beach, and maybe not that much will happen to us if the barometer drops hard. That is the sort of attitude that gets a man and his family killed in Bourne.

I have personally heard an 80-something year old guy talk about houses washing down the Cape Cod Canal in the 1938 storm, about people drowning in their attics as they tried to claw through the ceiling with their bare hands, about 5 feet of water rushing down Main Street, about old-school fisherman tough guys from the Great Depression getting blown off their feet and hurled down the road, and about power being off for months afterwards.

Bourne has an Achilles Heel, and it is the body of water known as Buzzards Bay. Buzzards Bay is sort of shaped like this ^ symbol, and water funnels up into it. It is a distinct geographical feature that we share with Bangladesh, and it leads to extensive flooding.

Hurricanes have storm surges, which are a wall of water that is pushed ashore ahead of/with the storm. If you were standing with your toes at the edge of the water at high tide and a ten foot storm surge suddenly appeared, you'd be under ten feet of water. Imagine how far that water would reach inland in such a situation, and mix it with 6-12" of rain, river/stream overflow and sewer backups to get an idea of what an Inundation Map represents.

We are just as vulnerable to a big storm now as we were in 1938. We are actually more vulnerable, if you think modern medicine, more accurate forecasting (Boston forecasters have blown mega-storm forecasts in 1978 and as recently as 1991's Halloween Gale and 2010's Hurricane Earl, but they didn't know the 1938 storm was happening until it hit them), and greater transportation capabilities are offset by the fact that 170,000 more people live here now and still only have two roads off of the Cape.

We'll get to all of that in a moment, but first, let me hit you up with some links. They'll help you out with the discussion.

- Hurricane Evacuation Zones

- Hurricane Inundation Map

- Cape Cod Emergency Traffic Plan

CYA, people. We live in dangerous times, and Bourne has been God's punching bag more than once.

We intend to cover Inundation Zones and Evacuation Zones. About halfway throuh the former, we decided that this would be a two-part special. Today is Inundation, tomorrow is Evacuation. If you are a Bourne resident or visitor, this is Disaster Porn right down to your very neighborhood.

I can play with this map all day, and I already have. It tells you what sort of hurricane would flood your neighborhood. They work by Saffir-Simpson scale, a la Category 1, Category 5 and what have you.

While I get the sense that some people would disagree with their findings, few would contend with the level of detail. You can check things not only to your town, and not only to your street, but also to your side of the street.

I had some rookie trouble getting the pics from their site to the Photobucket to here, and I apologize for the blurriness. I also apologize if I cut off the map right before it got to your house, I hate when people do that to me.

You can go to this link yourself and zoom right in on your own home, and I'd recommend doing so. It's always a wise move, getting a feel for the lay of the land around you.

To assess risk in Bourne, we'll go village-by-village.

**Yes, I'm aware that the map has my boyfriend and three Hooters waitresses on it. You get used to it after a while. Sorry girls... he's taken.

Buzzards Bay has 4 borders, and only one of them isn't liquid. Buzzards Bay (water) owns their South, the Canal bisects it, and Buttermilk Bay sits on the North and West. The trouble starts at Cohasset Narrows, out where the Massachusetts Maritime Academy is. They become inundated by a Cat-1, and you might be able to sink a boat by gouging out the bottom of it on the tallest building on Taylor's Point in a bigger storm.

It wouldn't take much of a storm (note: "much of a strorm" = "Category 2 hurricane") to inundate the Belmont Circle rotary at the mainland side of the Bourne Bridge. The rotary Capeside looks a bit better suited for Hell and high water, or at least the latter.

That trouble runs pretty much all from Taylor's Point through Buzzards Bay's Main Street area down to a bit past the Bourne Bridge. A Cat-2 storm would push the flooding over Main Street into the residential neighborhoods, and would inundate the police station, the fire station, and the Veteran's Community Center, which I presume is what they would use as a shelter. A Category 3 would be all-she-wrote for the Armory, which is the last place we could put refugees.

Bournedale, which is all wooded hills, would be untouched, save for the river flooding where the Herring Run meets the Canal. They would most likely lead the Cape in fallen trees and in boulders washing into roads, however. I live along the Bournedale/Sagamore border, on a hill, and that explains the relatively light-hearted tone of the article.

Sagamore and Sagamore Beach are basically Sagamore and North Sagamore. Route 3/6 is generally considered to be the western border. Sagamore Beach benefits mightily from Cape Cod's barrier beach effect, and only the direct shoreline is in danger. That danger would be immense in a bad storm, as there is nothing but sand between Cape Cod Bay and the first houses.

Sagamore would be at the mercy of a storm large enough to overflow the Canal. A storm of Cat-3 would flood into residential neighborhoods, although 6A would be spared up until the 130 intersection. The railroad and the power station would be fish toys in this hypothetical storm. The 3A part of Sagamore would be untouched by the sea.

Scusset Beach is Sandwich, so a Category 3 storm would end Sandwich's presence on the mainland, at least in an above-water sense. A much smaller storm would swallow up all of the revenue-generating parts.

While we're on the topic, I just want it on the Internet somewhere that we should trade south-of-the-Canal Sagamore to Sandwich for Scusset Beach, and I'd throw them a chunk of Bourne Village if they insisted upon it. It makes sense with the maps, with the cops, and with me. It would tie up a lot of loose ends.

Now, this destruction I've served up is bad. However, we have only gone through the mainland, landlubbing part of Bourne. Once you cross the bridges, it gets really dangerous.

Bourne Village is easy to describe. Once the Canal overflows, they are going to lose some houses. Houses on the Cape side of the Canal by the RR bridge would suffer heavily even in a smaller storm. As 1938 showed, the Canal isn't afraid to dine upon a few waterfront homes when the barometer gets low.

Where it gets sketchy is the if/when/where part of water creeping across and blocking Sandwich Road. Sandwich Road would be the Rubicon where a storm might start trapping refugees trying to get between bridges... assuming the bridges are open, as they presently are shut down when winds hit 70 mph.

Monument Beach, Gray Gables, and Mashnee all look to be completely under water in even a Cat-1 storm, with the inundation reaching County Road. These people would have to leave if the storm was coming, and they would, to their benefit, get to the bridges first if they were ready to move quickly when the deal went down

Shore Road looks to be where a regular-bad storm would reach, while worse ones would push past it.

Mashnee shares a problem with other parts of Bourne that we'll discuss in a moment, the problem of already being out in the water before the Inundation calculations start getting calculated.

Cataumet and Pocasset also have large sections of village that are sticking out into Buzzards Bay.

Wing's Neck, Mashnee Neck and Scraggy Neck all become a series of high-ground islands in hurricanes, and those islands are divided by hills in larger storms. Anyone riding out a major storm there is beyond foolish, although I'm sure that some of the hardcore have done it.

If an area like Sagamore Beach gets catastrophic storm damage, someone will eventually get a truck full of water or an ambulance out there soon enough. If the only road to land from where you live is, say, Scraggy Neck Road, they may have to carry your people out on boats or helicopters.

Flooding looks like a sure bet to close Shore Road and Red Brook Harbor Road.

Cape Cod's other towns have similar problems. The entire coast of Cape Cod is subject to inundation. Northern Cape Cod's shoreline is especially bad at Barnstable Harbor and Yarmouth Port, while the sea's push inland against the Nantucket Sound side would move exponentially according to storm intensity.

Route 28 would be inundated from the 28/Main Street merge in Hyannis to South Harwich in a strong storm. 6A gets covered in Sandwich and again in West Barnstable. Route 6 would need a James Bond car from Provincetown to Wellfleet

Just due to the lay of the land and the lack of overflowable rivers, Cape Codders can avoid flooding by moving inland a mile or so. Duxbury or Wareham are far, far more at risk for inland inundation than Cape Cod is. Our greatest danger is the wind, but that's a whole other article.

Again, Cape Codders can generally escape the sea by moving inland, but that's starting to bleed into tomorrow's evacuation article.

Speaking of escape routes....

The South Shore can divided in half. Much of it is protected by Cape Cod, one of America's biggest barrier beaches. This southern South Shore is also a relatively straight coastline, with few Bangladeshian water funnels. From Sagamore Beach to Plymouth Harbor, areas where coastal flooding would reach more than 100 yards inland are few.

At this point, you amazingly have to look to Provincetown for a trend. Imagine that you are a big ocean wind. You are moving from east to west at 125 mph. At a certain latitude/longitude, the first thing in Massachusetts you will hit is Provincetown. Above that latitude, it becomes Duxbury and Hull. Where the wind goes across the water, the storm surge is sure to follow.

Duxbury, Kingston, Marshfield and Scituate are also estuaries, meaning that there is a lot of salt marsh behind the barrier beaches, and salt marshes flood very easily in storms. The end result is all that nor'easter flooding you see on the news. A stretch of coast from Duxbury to Scituate inundates heavily, with houses on Duxbury Beach frequently finding themselves effectively a mile out in the ocean when the marsh floods in even cupcake storms.

The North River is unique in that it would bring coastal flooding as far inland as Hanover and Pembroke. Pembroke is funny because, when you buy a house 15 miles inland, you don't really expect "pumping water from ocean storms out of your basement" to be part of the bargain. However, the South Shore doesn't play fair.

If it makes Hanover residents feel better, a storm bad enough to push water damage to you will probably have blown your house down like the Big Bad Wolf long before.... so, like, no worries. 

The South Coast is the opposite of the sheltered side of the South Shore. They get the surf pushing up from the South Atlantic, and they take the landfall in many cases. Rivers empty there, and all of the land is relatively low-lying. It is where the storm surge smashes into Massachusetts.

A swath of coastline from Mattapoisett to Marion would be soaked several miles inland in a big storm. The Sippican River confluence, the Acushnet River Valley Golf Course (which is just below New Bedfords reservoir) and Tihonet Pond would all get ocean storm water in a Katrina-style storm.

Route 195 would be submerged from about where Tabor Academy is in Marion to the Weweantic River in Wareham. This detour-by-God also occurs in what looks to me like the region that is most at risk during a large storm.

Wareham gets her own paragraph. If the storm gets bad enough, all of Wareham east of Wareham Crossing would be underwater to some extent. Route 25 would be impassable from Wal-Mart to Wareham Crossing. Water could push 3 miles inland, to the cranberry bogs off of Route 25. The entire Cranberry Highway business district would be underwater.

If the storm gets bad enough (Category 3 or higher) and made a direct hit, Wareham would suffer worse than any region of the state. It would take years to recover.

In closing, we just want to remind you that Massachusetts is a dangerous place if a hurricane is coming, Cape Cod and the South Coast are particularly dangerous spots in Massachusetts, and Bourne is a particularly dangerous spot on both the South Coast and Cape Cod.

Residents or even visitors should study those maps, learn them, know them and live them. They should check back now and then, to see if any relevant opinions have changed. This is information you should be fully aware of.

Having your house wrecked by a storm sucks pretty hard, but what sucks worse is getting killed while it happens. We need your site visits, and we care about you... so keep informed.