Storm Ida Pounds Shoreline
Takes a bite out of Montauk’s Soundview
(11/19/2009) “The only difference between this place and the Titanic is the Titanic had a band” is the message on the answering machine this week at the Schwanewede residence on Soundview Drive in Montauk, where waves
 East Hampton Town Natural Resources Department
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spawned by the northeast-storm remnants of Hurricane Ida destroyed a long section of bulkheads over the weekend.
William Schwanewede sustained serious injuries and a broken camera on Sunday morning when he fell from what had been the top of the bulkhead protecting his eroded backyard to the rocks below. He broke six ribs and punctured a lung in the fall.
Hurricane Ida came out of the Gulf of Mexico, crossed Florida, and climbed up the East Coast as a tropical storm and northeaster. It stalled in Virginia, causing major flooding in large part because a high-pressure system centered in Maine held the storm in place.
Although it finally passed southeast of the East End, the storm’s east-northeast winds created a high-tide surge that eroded East Hampton and Southampton’s south-facing beaches, and that pummeled Montauk’s north side. Tides were unusually high due to the approach of the new moon.
As a result, five property owners in Montauk’s Soundview community have applied, to both East Hampton Town and the State Department of Environmental Conservation, for emergency permits to repair broken bulkheads. A large bite was taken out of the Schwanewede property after a section of bulkhead was smashed and carried away by high-tide surges between Friday and early Sunday morning.
Tom Talmage, the East Hampton Town engineer, said he was first alerted to the situation early Saturday morning which set in motion an emergency permit process required before a contractor could shore up the exposed bluff. “It was only 20 feet wide on Saturday morning,” Mr. Talmage said of the breach.
By Sunday morning, when the town supervisor-elect, Bill Wilkinson, surveyed the area, at least 200 feet of bulkhead had been torn from the bluffs protecting Soundview homes. The bluff in front of Chris and Anna Kyriakides’s house collapsed to within 15 feet of the structure’s bay-facing stoop, Mr. Talmage said.
“If the storm had hung around another 12 hours it could have been real bad. Northeasters are usually good because they move so fast. This one didn’t,” the engineer said on Tuesday.
He added that the bulkheading had failed when wooden pilings and sheathing worn thin by sand and rock over the years was snapped by the power of the waves. The Keith Grimes construction company, which had to bring heavy equipment in from a job in Mattituck on Saturday, was busy making repairs this week.
“Devastating. We certainly suffered serious dune and beach erosion, 30 to 40 feet of dune loss. At some of those houses you can see
 Russell Drumm
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old foundations exposed on the beach that have not been exposed in a lifetime,” said Billy Mack of the First Coastal engineering company.
Mr. Mack said waves reached heights of 20 feet offshore, with swells attacking Long Island’s south-facing beaches through five high tides.
“The north wind, which usually flattens waves, was feeding the low-pressure system,” Mr. Mack said. First Coastal had received numerous phone calls from homeowners looking for sand to replace what had been lost, he said.
Larry Penny, East Hampton Town’s director of natural resources, said permits for the excavation of a large shoal at the south end of Georgica Pond in East Hampton were in place. The shoal has been a source of sand for beach replenishment in Wainscott and to the west for several years.
The Georgica Pond sand is owned, on behalf of the East Hampton public, by the East Hampton Town Trustees, who oversee its excavation and sale. The excavation was planned before the weekend storm and it can begin as early as Dec. 1. Bids for the work will be going out soon.
Bridgehampton’s ocean beaches were eaten once again, especially in the area of Surfside Drive, where dunes were wiped away. In Southampton, the ocean washed through to Dune Road in Hampton Bays and a motel complex was undermined. The town pavilion in Quogue was undermined as well, and there was structural damage to a building on the bay side.