Flood of 1936
Flood of 1936
| Type | Disaster |
| Date | March 12, 1936 |
Billerica's two rivers, the Concord River in the west and the Shawsheen River in the east, both run slowly through broad meadows, and in a wet spring or after a tropical storm they spread over the low land along their banks. Floods carried away the first bridge at The Fordway about 1698, but the floods that shaped the modern town came after the riverbanks had filled with summer colonies and small house lots in the early twentieth century, in neighborhoods such as River Pines, Riverhurst and Rio Vista on the Concord and The Pines, Riverdale, Riverbank Terrace and Shore Acres on the Shawsheen. The town reports record major floods in March 1936, August 1955, April 1968, January 1979, the early 1980s, April 1987 and March 2010, and each brought the same work: evacuating families, sandbagging houses, pumping cellars, closing and repairing roads and bridges, and asking the state and federal governments to repay the cost.
The flood of March 1936, the great New England flood of that spring, set the mark against which later floods were measured. In the middle of March "the turbulent waters of the Concord and Shawsheen Rivers overflowed their banks and covered many of our highways with two feet of water"; the highway department laid sandbags, roadbeds washed out, and in places traffic was impossible. At the Billerica Town Water Supply Pumping Station on Boston Road the grounds were under several feet of water, the building could be reached only by boat, and the pumping station floor was flooded to a depth of fifteen inches, "setting a new high water mark locally," yet Superintendent Frederick T. O'Hara's men kept the supply running. When the City of Lowell asked for help with its water supply, Billerica ran hose from its hydrants to the city's lines, and on March 21 the fire department laid 2,500 feet of hose for the purpose; the fire department's electric pump under Chief Ernest N. Bartlett was in continual use pumping out cellars from March 12 to April 10. With a federal grant the town afterward replaced all but one of its wooden bridges and filled its streets back to grade. The game warden found the next season's fishing poor because "the high waters of last March" had changed the feeding grounds of the fish.
People
- Frederick T. O'Hara: Water Superintendent, who kept the town's water supply running when the March 1936 flood reached fifteen inches over the pumping station floor.
- Ernest N. Bartlett: Fire Chief, whose department pumped flooded cellars from March 12 to April 10, 1936 and laid hose to supply Lowell with water.