On Oct. 14, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will hold an informational meeting about the Noman’s Land Island National Wildlife Refuge comprehensive conservation plan. The meeting will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Chilmark library. Members of the public will have the opportunity to meet the staff, learn about current refuge management, help identify issues and concerns and make recommendations about future refuge programs.
Residents along the south shore of the Island may hear loud explosions in the coming months due to an operation conducted by the U.S. Navy to clear and remove unexploded ordnance on Noman’s Land left over from training exercises during World War II.
David Barney, base realignment and closure coordinator for the U.S. Navy, said this week the objective is to identify and clear military ordnance that may have been exposed since the last clearing operation in 2003.
The smoke may have cleared from the controlled burn performed by the U.S. Navy last Wednesday on Noman’s Land, but questions remain this week as to whether more could have been done to alert the public and prevent the confusion that led to a barrage of calls to the Island communications center.
Officials at the Dukes County communications center last week received between 50 to 100 calls while the fire burned on Noman’s, the small uninhabited island off the southern coast of Chilmark.
Island emergency officials were inundated with
calls from concerned residents Wednesday afternoon after a haze of smoke
and ash descended on the Island from a brush fire on Noman’s Land, the small uninhabited island off the southern coast
of Chilmark.
The fire was part of a
controlled burn started by the U.S. Navy to clear away underbrush and
expose unexploded ordinances left on Noman’s during
training exercises over the past five decades. Noman’s
Land is part of the town of the town of Chilmark, but is owned by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
It has been an unusual past 100 years for Noman’s Land, that half-forgotten rock off Chilmark and Aquinnah that has occasionally reasserted its presence to Vineyarders with wafting smoke clouds and distant bomb blasts. Shrouded in mystery and explosives, it has seen rumrunners, pirates, hurricanes, and even an accidental internecine gun battle between the Coast Guard and the Navy in 1967.
In 1896 William Mayhew escorted a Boston Globe reporter to Noman’s Land to meet the Butlers, the Island’s lone, rather eccentric inhabitants. Mr. Butler, after explaining that their daughter was possessed by the spirit of a Boston milliner and would often race around the house in a fit of hat trimming, conveyed the desolation of the place, perhaps as idiomatically as possible: “We don’t git any news here at this time of year ’ceptin what comes on the wind, and it’s about two months now since we’ve heard from the American Continent.
