Power slowly restored after long lashing

We were lucky. Somebody up there likes us. Can you flush?

Those were just some of the frequently heard comments spoken by Island residents after people came out from under wraps to survey the damage following a day-long Sunday visit from Hurricane Irene. There wasn’t as much rain as predicted — less than two inches according to most reports — and the eye of the storm didn’t pass as close as had been warned. They eye crossed over Coney Island in Brooklyn at 9 a.m. Sunday, becoming a tropical storm with top winds of about 65 mph. As far as the winds went here, though they started on Saturday night and stayed late on Sunday, they barely lived up to the expected “strong category 1” status predicted Saturday.

But even so, some property owners did sustain substantial damage from falling limbs and toppled trees, and then there was the annoyance of losing power, phone and cable. But the loudest sound heard after the rain stopped and the winds died down was a big, collective “whew.”

ALL IN IT TOGETHER 

Shelter Island Police Detective/Sergeant Jack Thilberg said on Tuesday that no area of the Island was unaffected by the storm. The department received more than 115 reports of trees, limbs and wires down. Trees fell on three cars at Hubbard’s Repair Shop on Jaspa Road and on homes across the Island and a branch hit an off-Island motorist on Route 114. The motorist refused medical attention for an injured hand.

According to the police blotter, about eight calls were received requesting that police check on family members or property. There were about 10 reports of boats grounding on beaches on Ram Island, Menantic, West Neck Creek and a floating dock was reported lost during the storm.

Supervisor Jim Dougherty praised the efforts of the Emergency Preparedness Committee chaired by Police Chief Jim Read, the Highway Crew, Red Cross, Ambulance, Fire Department, Recreation and Channel 22.

Everyone involved did a “superior job and Shelter Island came through nicely,” he said.

POWER FAILURES ALL OVER

It was noted by many residents that the highway crews were out throughout the storm, working to remove trees and keep roads open. Power failures hit different areas at different times in the early morning hours on Sunday, some lucky residents had power restored shortly after the storm, and the supervisor pointed out at about noon on Tuesday that Shelter Island, with about 35 percent of its LIPA customers without power, was faring much better than other neighboring towns. By then the outages were largely in Silver Beach, Montclair Colony, the Heights, Dering Harbor and Big Ram. By mid-afternoon on Tuesday, pocket areas that had been without power were slowly getting it back. “Most people are being patient,” Mr. Dougherty said.

At the Town Board’s weekly work session on Tuesday, all the members of the board expressed gratitude for the efforts of the fire, police and the highway crews, being out there and keeping the roads open. Also thanked were members of the Fire Department who went door-to-door on Ram Island on Saturday advising residents that the supervisor had called for a non-mandatory evacuation.

Councilmen Peter Reich and Glenn Waddington gave high marks to the coordinated and “well-choreographed” efforts of the fire, police and highway departments in dealing with what they had to work with, jointly. Councilwoman Chris Lewis related how South Ferry made a trip to North Haven to pick up Jan Warner, who waded through a flooded parking lot to get to the ferry so she could help open Fedi’s. Ms. Lewis and the rest of the board commended the Warner family for keeping the store up and running throughout the hurricane.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Councilman Ed Brown made a plea to LIPA to try to get power to two restaurants, the Ram’s Head Inn and Fresh, that were still without it, so that they could take in supplies before the upcoming Labor Day weekend. On Wednesday morning, Mr. Brown reported that both were once again on line. A lot of businesses are already stretched thin, Mr. Brown said, and it would have been a major disaster for them to miss out on the last big weekend.

DODGING A BULLET

According to Chief Read at the work session and George Ello, a LIPA engineer who conferenced in by telephone, at some point during the storm, the entire Island was without power. But in a few instances, the outages may have been brief or gone unnoticed, because Cliff Clark of the South Ferry Company said he wasn’t aware that his office ever lost power.

Three of South Ferry’s boats were tied up during the hurricane: one in West Neck, one in Westmoreland and another at the North Haven ferry dock. The Sunrise was kept in service throughout the storm, which did very little damage to South Ferry property. “We lost a few dock planks and there was some erosion at the east landing,” Mr. Clark said, and they lost some locust trees. The Sunrise operated as needed, though the high tide made it difficult for sedans — cars with low carriages — to board the ferry, Mr. Clark said.

He was among many who lauded LIPA’s efforts to restore power to its customers. “What a great demonstration of support for the Island,” he said.

STORM STORIES

With the sounds of generators and chain saws in the background and the smell of freshly cut wood in the air, Islander’s shared their storm stories and compared notes on the number of trees down, the amount of beach erosion and other damage.

There was sad news from Sylvester Manor that Irene’s gusts took down a copper beech tree planted in the mid-1880s by Asa Gray, said the manor’s Executive Director Cara Loriz. There was also some crop damage and sunflowers were flattened by the wind. “We tried to prop them back up but they don’t look too good,” she said on Tuesday. There was also leaf damage to the crops and she said she was not sure that the plants would rebound enough to make a good harvest. On the bright side, there was no damage to the manor house, but by Wednesday morning, they still had no power.

There was no damage to the Mashomack Manor House; however, a lot of trees came down, staff member Rebecca Mundy said on Tuesday, adding that the staff was working to clear the lawns and the road.

Bliss’ Department Store was closed on Sunday but owners Walter and Peggy Johnson were at their Bridge Street business playing a waiting game as the incoming tide brought the water closer and higher and threatened to flood the store on Sunday morning. Reached at the store a little after 10 a.m., about 15 minutes before high tide, Ms. Johnson said that they were waiting to see if Irene would push water into the store. “It’s getting closer,” she said. Mr. Johnson reported that at the last moment there was a shift in the wind a few minutes before the high tide and it kept the water away. The water was “shy of an inch from coming inside the store,” he said. Fortunately, there was no damage from it or the wind.

Heights Property Owners Corporation General Manager Julie Ben-Susan said that the high tide did flood the North Ferry parking lot, which was vacant, but for one car, and blocked by cones.

Water surrounded the Yacht Club but it didn’t go in, she said. Except for losing “a load of trees,” some of which landed on power lines, Irene caused minimal damage in the Heights, Ms. Ben-Susan said, and that “relatively speaking” the Island had been spared a catastrophe. During the height of the storm on Sunday, North Ferry operations stopped for about two hours because the tide was too high to use the ramps.

There was one ambulance call while the ferry was tied up and it would have been difficult to make the crossing. The ambulance crew was able to stabilize the patient, Ms. Ben-Susan said, and waited for the ferry to run again so the patient could be transported to the hospital.

There was no damage to either the ferries or the slips.

Wesley and Sunnyside avenues and Sylvan Place were closed because of fallen trees, some that brought wires down with them. As of Tuesday morning, Ms. Ben-Susan said, there were some pockets in the Heights without power. She said she thought that LIPA’s response had been “terrific,” adding that the utility was very “present” on the Island before, during and after the storm.

Cablevision, however, is a different story, she said. Many Cablevision customers were without television, Internet and telephone, for at least as long as they were without power. In the past, Cablevision has been “reliable” and quick to respond in nor’easters and snow storms, but the lack of response and action by the utility has been a disappointment, Ms. Ben-Susan said.

Inconveniences and annoyances aside, Irene was so much worse in so many other places, “We were lucky we were spared.”

SHELL BEACH EROSION

Jim Colligan of Silver Beach said on Tuesday morning that Nostrand Parkway was still barricaded because of fallen trees and downed wires and there was no power to Silver Beach, but at 5:30 p.m. that evening Mr. Colligan reported power had been restored to his area.

What won’t be so easy to fix is the erosion damage in that area caused by Hurricane Irene, some of it along the bulk-headed waterfront at and around the Gitlin property at 70 Peconic Avenue; also along the upper end of the Shell Beach peninsula, where erosion threatened to undermine the road.

Island Boatyard General Manager James Brantuk said that his staff including Donald Cocks, his service manager, had a plan that involved hauling more than 60 boats and spending the night before and the day of Irene, tying and re-tying the boats in the water and on boat stands. The water came up just over the docks, he said, but didn’t damage the facility. “We had a lot of good help,” he said. Because there was no power on Tuesday, he wasn’t sure that the boatyard would be fully functional for the Labor Day weekend. It takes a few days to clean up the pool, he said, and if power wasn’t restored in time, it would not be available.

Coecles Harbor Boatyard came through Hurricane Irene “very, very well,” said one of the owners, John Needham, adding that he owes it all to his seasoned staff. They hauled out 55 boats, and then from 6 a.m. to noon, checked every boat, every 15 minutes. One of his employees came up with the idea of sandbagging the doors to the shop, an area that often floods. The tide was three feet above normal, he said, and the water came up to the shop, but the sandbags kept it out.

He said, “All of us had information regarding the hurricane,” through the miracle of technology and electricity. But at 3 a.m., the power went out and all of a sudden, he said, there was no information. It created a feeling of helplessness, of being “out of the know” about what was going on. All you could do was make decisions in the moment and deal with what came at you, he said. In the end, it all turned out okay. And even the next day, when the storm had passed, but there was still no power, “It was kind of comfortable,” he said.

GOING POWERLESS

Most people admit that going without the luxury of electricity can be a little exciting, sort of like an adventure, for a day or two. But after that it gets kind of stale, and worse for people who don’t have water because their electric pumps don’t work. To help out in that area, at Tuesday’s work session Police Chief Jim Read announced that on Tuesday and Wednesday the school would open its boys and girls bathrooms and showers from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. to Island residents. If necessary, that service would be extended beyond that.

Now begins the cleanup. The state of emergency declared by Supervisor Dougherty is still in effect and fees for depositing brush and debris at the dump will continue through 6 p.m. Saturday. By noon on Tuesday, 200 tons of brush had been taken to the dump already. It was noted at Tuesday’s work session that in the aftermath of Hurricane Gloria, 13,000 tons of debris was trucked to the dump. At a rate of 200 tons a day, it’s going be a long time — roughly 65 days, a little over two months — before debris from Hurricane Irene is no longer coming into the dump. Because of that, the town will ask the DEC to consider temporarily allowing burning and will rent equipment to grind and move the debris so highway equipment can be used for work on the roads.

One inconvenience as a result of the storm was that the Recycling Center wasn’t in operation because of the amount of electricity it took to run the heavy equipment. On Wednesday morning, a highway employee there said that he expected the Recycling Center would be up and running by Thursday. The S.T.O.P. program for the collection of household hazardous material for Saturday, September 3 at the Recycling Center will go on as scheduled, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

On Wednesday morning, residents were still in the early stages of the clean-up process and no one wanted to hear the reports of a new hurricane taking shape out in the Atlantic on a track that was paralleling Irene’s off the Leeward Islands and north of Peurto Rico.

A woman at the post office reported gleefully that she finally had power and summed up the sentiment of many residents when she said, “Electricity. It’s a wonderful thing.”