Mark your calendars: Community Forum to discuss multiple threats and safeguards for Shelter Island

A fire, driven by high winds, fueled by acres of Shelter Island woodlands, jumps to residential neighborhoods and races through, incinerating houses. A Category Five Hurricane barrels up the Eastern seaboard and strikes Shelter Island with full force knocking down power lines, wrecking structures and producing storm surges of 20 feet at hight tides, putting main thoroughfares under water and flooding homes. A malfunction of the electrical grid blacks out the Northeast, including Shelter Island.

This has never happened here, and the catastrophic scenarios will hopefully never become reality. But that old cliché about not having a plan is planning to fail holds true.

We’ve seen other communities confronted with disasters just this year, such as the wildfires in California and one closer to home in Westhampton, multiple tornadoes in the Midwest, and in 2024 a murderous hurricane striking Puerto Rico. We also remember the power grid outage in Texas in February 2021, which has been designated as one of the most devastating energy crises in the nation’s history, with millions of people in the dark and temperatures below freezing. 

A small island, confronted with similar situations, is in even more peril.

The Island, although struck by nature’s overwhelming power on occasion — Superstorm Sandy of October 2012 comes to mind — has never been really devastated. But as our weekly columnist Karl Grossman has written: “It can happen here. Consider Hurricane Fiona, that struck northeastern Canada with 100 mph winds at Category 2. ‘I’m seeing homes in the ocean,’ said René J. Roy of Newfoundland, chief editor of the newspaper there … ‘I’m seeing rubble floating all over the place. It’s complete and utter destruction.’ On his website, Informed Comment, University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole took issue with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who said Hurricane Ian was a ‘once-in-a-500-year flood event.’ It is ‘the new normal,’ said Cole. And the ‘ocean water up north is no longer … cold … so hurricanes can remain strong all the way up to New York, Boston and even Newfoundland.’”

With these cautionary tales in mind, the Reporter is launching its next Community Forum on Wednesday, Dec. 3, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., at the Presbyterian Church’s Fellowship Hall titled: Shelter Island Vulnerabilities.  

The staff listed some liabilities in face of a disaster: no pharmacy; one gas station; a physician’s hours severely cut; an aging population; and sea levels rising  dramatically every year.

The panel for the forum will be: Town Supervisor Amber Brach-Williams, Police Chief and Emergency Management Coordinator Jim Read, Cristina Peffer of the Chamber of Commerce, Senior Community Development Officer of the Resilient Energy Island Institute Kate Kilbansky, and former Town Engineer and Reporter columnist John Cronin, who has written about the threat of wildfires on the Island.

The panel will be questioned by Reporter staffer Charity Robey and the floor will then be open for questions from the audience.

This will be the fifth of the Reporter Community Forums, which were inaugurated last year. Other topics put before the community have been the future of the Island, a discussion about the state of the Island’s ferries, small business challenges, and the commercial fishing industry.

Everyone is invited to attend, free of charge, on Wednesday Dec. 3, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., at the Presbyterian Church’s Fellowship Hall.