Giant Wave Tragedy from "BILL"

Victims of Giant Wave at Maine Park Are Identified


LIZ ROBBINS
Published: August 24, 2009
Clio Dahyun Axilrod and her parents had joined the thousands of visitors on Sunday enthralled by the spectacular waves fueled by Hurricane Bill that were breaking off the Atlantic Coast of Acadia National Park in Maine.

But as one series of waves crashed off the cliffs about 150 yards south of the popular Thunder Hole, the family, from New York City, recognized the danger, turned around and headed up a diagonal path toward the roadway,

They were about 40 feet from the main road, Ocean Drive, witnesses told a park ranger, when a 20-foot-high swell exploded into the air, sweeping Clio; her father, Peter J. Axilrod, and five other people out to sea. Clio’s mother, Sandra M. Kuhach, was knocked to the ground and seriously injured. Nearly a dozen other people suffered less severe injuries.

Four of those who were dragged into the ocean were able to make it out on their own from the 55-degree water to safety, according to a Coast Guard spokesman, Chief Petty Officer Christopher Wheeler.

About 45 minutes later, Mr. Axilrod was rescued by the Coast Guard in a 47-foot lifeboat.

A 12-year-old girl, Simone Pelletier, from Belfast, Me., was also brought to safety by the Coast Guard, and taken to Mount Desert Island Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

But it took rescuers more than three hours to find Clio, 7, whose lifeless body was located about a half-mile from shore. She died from drowning, the Maine Marine Patrol said on Monday.

Her parents remained hospitalized at Eastern Maine Medical Center, a patrol spokesman said in a news release.

Acadia National Park’s chief ranger, Stuart West, recounted on Monday how a sunny summer weekend suddenly turned tragic.

Earlier Sunday, park officials had closed off the paved walkway and series of interlocking gates that led to viewing stations at Thunder Hole, an inlet with a submerged cave that is known to produce booming, plumelike waves. On Friday signs warning visitors were posted there and on Sand Beach, just to the north.

But Mr. West said that the bedrock path 150 yards south of Thunder Hole was not closed. “We didn’t close off all the rock areas,” he said. “I don’t think there was a need for it. The fact that there was high surf, and the good weather, it was like a bug to a light. People were going to go no matter what.”

Ten park rangers were on duty Sunday morning, he said, with others volunteering throughout the day to monitor the capacity crowd and the conditions.

“If you close off an area, people are going to spill into another area,” Mr. West said. “And if we keep those areas contained, and stack them full of rangers, that way we can have an immediate response, which is what happened.”

Mr. West said he did not know whether a park ranger had warned the victims and it was unclear if they had seen the warning signs in nearby areas.

Park rangers learned from the Coast Guard, Mr. West said, that the waves, about 15 feet high, were arriving at 16-second intervals. The penultimate wave in the fatal series landed at the ankles of observers on the cliffs. The one after that was unlike all the rest.

“Nature is forceful and unpredictable — and it just moves us to pay close attention to where we are,” said Mr. West, who was at Schoodic Point, another beach on the mainland part of the park, when the accident occurred. “You could tell people to step back, but they didn’t register how dangerous the waves were.”

“All I can say,” he added, “is that we do the best we can to educate the public,” he said.

By Monday, the number of visitors along Ocean Drive had dwindled, along with the size of the waves. The ocean near Acadia had calmed as Bill, which had been downgraded to a tropical storm when it hit off the coast of Cape Cod late Saturday, had moved far east into the Atlantic.