Signs of the Times

So what’s with Maine signs this summer? First, there was the new Gov’s beloved “Open for Business” sign posted on I-95 on the state’s southern border – you know, just below the Welcome to Maine sign with its tag line “The Way Life Should Be,” a motto that some local old-timers have long translated to: “The Way Life Used To Be.” Sometime around Memorial Day, LePage’s business sign mysteriously “disappeared.” No. Let’s be clear – it was hoisted. Many asserted this was a revenge move, a response to the Gov’s controversial removal of a multi-panel mural from the Department of Labor, with its historical depictions of labor movement folks, shoe cobblers and seamstresses among them, and an obvious threat to the business community LePage was trying to pay back, er, I mean, support. Much hoopla followed – outrage, news coverage, phony Sign for Sale postings on Craig’s List, a ransom note left at Stephen King’s radio station, and the conviction in some circles that the sign’s disappearance was an omen that a much-needed summer season of prosperity was now doomed (actually, record rainfall and a non-existent spring had more to do with the dearth of visitors hiking it up the turnpike in late May and June). Given all this fall-out, many of us didn’t notice the new signs suddenly sprouting up on our roads like mushrooms in the lawn after rain.

These are the new blue-and-white Emergency Evacuation signs framed in a white circle with a directional arrow. Aiming to be prudent responses to public safety threats, they’re the result of a $30,000 grant received by the Maine Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (or what Maine humorist Al Diamon refers to as the agency with the motto “Administering the Oceans And The Atmosphere About As Well as the Federal Reserve Administration Administers The Economy”). These new informational road signs – there are 130 of them posted from Kittery to Eastport – are meant to instruct coastal residents to the best evacuation routes and help them move safely to high ground and emergency shelters.

The fact that these signs were also going up about the same time as the Rapture was being predicted was not lost on some folks. Here, then, they said, and even reported to the Bangor Daily News, was further proof humanity’s final days were about over. Indeed, speculated the more conspiratorially-minded, might not these evacuation signs be evidence of some vast government plan to herd us elsewhere? What seemed to get more traction, particularly, I’m sure, when the morning-after-Rapture dawned clear and bright and end-of-timers were forced into refiguring their calculations, was that the fears of a tsunami, the likes of which had recently and tragically brought mayhem to coastal Japan, were behind the sudden appearance of these signs.  

Now the likelihood of a tsunami in Maine may seem like quite a reach. But fact is, MEMA officials report, Maine could experience one. The biggest threat, they say, lies with the Puerto Rican Trench, an active fault area. There, if a Richter-scale earthquake of 7 or greater were to occur, it could produce a tsunami of three to six feet hitting Maine’s coast several hours later. Caution: before anyone is urged toward a “Run for your lives!” mentality new evacuation signs might help promote, it’s worth pointing out this tsunami-thing is a pretty big If.

On the whole, Maine manages to escape the large-scale natural disasters more common to other regions – the earthquakes, major floods, tornadoes and mudslides. And surely, we have to assume, volcanoes. But hurricanes and severe coastal storms can and do pose threats. Climate change and global warming have already begun to raise sea levels that will in the future add to potential havoc. In 2008, in what was called a (say what?) “meteorological tsunami,” a tidal surge in Boothbay Harbor rapidly and repeatedly drained and then refilled the harbor. Fortunately, this mind-boggling series of events occurred at low tide.

The MEMA officials think $30,000 is a smart investment and a small price for being prepared. And I don’t disagree, although in the 15 years I’ve been calling a Maine island home a good part of the year, I’ve observed that the islanders and peninsula dwellers I know are superb at being prepared. Not so much though are the tourists and visitors who some years flood into the region like a storm surge (as our seasonal inn keepers and restaurant owners can only hope).  For them the best routes to high, inland roads and shelters, all of which are known like the backs of their hands to year-round dwellers of this place, probably do need to be identified, including the short cuts and unmarked places where low-lying roads always flood no matter if storm surge mapping says otherwise.

But this then begs myriad questions: Who determined these evacuation routes, all of which seem to lead in the general direction of Mount Katahdin? Who designed the models for getting us out and up? And where are the best places to post such signs?

In other words, at about $250 a pop, where do they give the best bang for the buck? And folks, it probably isn’t on Route 15 within a quick sprinting distance from the causeway and in eyeshot of if not within the shadow of our island bridge. A bridge that is – do we need reminding? – our one and only vehicular route off the island? I mean, do these experts have an alternate in mind? Even a tourist would have to be dead asleep at the wheel (it's been suggested some are) not to notice the singular way you drive onto the island, and, reversing direction, get off it.

I’m not sure what network of agencies was involved in all this, but I have read that MDOT spent the past two years fine-tuning the signs' designs – and their locations. Really? Chances are we’re all meant to pretty much wind up in the same place should an evacuation of the type they’re planning for actually be necessary. But I also have to believe it would be better for everyone were signs used to demarcate lesser known feeder routes and back roads in order to lighten potential traffic choke holds.

So it’s not the signs themselves but their placement. And I think we islanders could well sacrifice our sign near the causeway to a location of less obvious direction. Were we to give it up, even the tourists would have to know where to go, given the flow of traffic heading in one direction on the only road to the bridge. It’d be sort of like getting swept up in a riptide, I suspect, or trying to buck the outflowing current of traffic when one of our island sports teams is playing a championship game on the mainland. A few years back, the basket ball team became the state champions. Signs weren’t needed to direct the way to the game but one islander’s hand-painted sign erected at the bridge no doubt came in handy – “Last One Off The Island, Turn Off The Lights.” Further proof, I’d say, we islanders are prepared.