Many communities mark the turn of the new year by sending fireworks shooting through the sky.
The midcoast city of Belfast used to be one of them. But roughly 15 years ago, organizers decided to move on from fireworks, which had gotten too expensive. Ever since, community members have instead kept their party closer to earth, lighting a large annual bonfire along the Belfast Harbor at the turn of the calendar.
They’re planning to do so again for this holiday, setting a torch to a large pile of lumber down by the public landing and letting attendees revel in its warm glow.
“I think everybody wants that New Year’s Eve midnight moment that means something, and that is something that we do,” said Mike Hurley, who has organized the bonfires since they started. “I think people definitely respond to it. There will be hundreds of people there, and it’s meaningful because we’re all together, and starting a new year, a lot of hope, and leaving the old behind, and what’s coming in next.”
But how exactly does one go about lighting a large fire so close to a downtown, without running afoul of local rules or letting the flames spread?
It starts with a deliberately chosen location. Organizers hold the fire on the town landing, where there are the buffers of saltwater and a sandy beach. The closest burnable structures are more than 50 feet away.
“We chose to build it in a location where nothing’s going to catch fire,” Hurley said.
Hurley, who used to be the city’s mayor, said that organizers also receive a permit from the Fire Department for the blaze. After it’s complete, volunteers then stick around into the night to make sure it has fully gone out.
Of course, plenty of work happens in the hours before then. Earlier in the day on New Year’s Eve, volunteers set up the wood — donated by a local business — so that it’s ready to be lit.
“It’s always amazing how many people show up and how fast it’s built,” Hurley said.
Then, after various other celebratory activities are held downtown earlier in the evening, residents form what’s called the Drum and Rabble Marching Society, in which they bang drums pots, pans and other percussive devices to create a ruckus as they march down to the beach.
Organizers then recruit two young children to use torches to set the tinder aflame, setting off the last part of the celebration.
The fire usually runs for two hours — with some celebrants tossing things into the flames to symbolically do away with their baggage from the outgoing year — and concludes around 2:30 a.m., at which point the fire is extinguished.
Just as younger residents are recruited to spark the fire, and after more than a decade as the bonfire’s lead organizer, Hurley is looking for volunteers who are willing to take the torch — as it were — from him after this week.
“I can tell you where I’ve been for the last 15 years on New Year’s Eve at midnight: lighting the bonfire,” Hurley said with a laugh. “This year, I’m inviting other people to get involved so that there’s a team that will take it over in the future. I’ve done it for 15 years, and I’m definitely looking to hand it off.”
