Edras Mendez-Ventura of Northwest Woods in East Hampton, who turned 23 on New Year’s Day, has been in county jail in Riverside since his arrest on Jan. 31, unable to meet bail of $15,000 on charges of drunken driving. He was scheduled to be released on Monday, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement asked that he be detained.

Since President Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, Suffolk County has returned to the practice of honoring such requests, even though ICE rarely acts on them. The county bears the cost of the 48-hour detention period after an ICE hold is placed.

East Hampton Town police stopped Mr. Mendez-Ventura’s 2003 Nissan Altima on Windmill Lane in Amagansett for swerving across lane lines, and charged the driver with misdemeanor drunken driving after he failed roadside sobriety tests. At Wainscott headquarters, his breath test reportedly produced a reading of .13, well over the .08 level that triggers the charge.

Mr. Mendez-Ventura already has an open charge of driving while intoxicated in Southampton Justice Court, stemming from a 2015 arrest. His license was suspended after that arrest, meaning that the current charge of unlicensed driving is at the felony level. A grand jury did not indict him on the felony within 120 hours of his arrest, however, and he would have been free Monday but for the ICE action.

A Springs man facing a similar situation managed to make bail of $7,500 on Tuesday and avoid being jailed, after his lawyer advised him to call everyone he knew in order to come up with the needed amount, lest he be sent to Riverside and then detained by ICE.

Angel H. Uyaguari-Farez, 36, was arrested for D.W.I. last August; that case is still pending in East Hampton Town Justice Court. On Monday night, town police say, his 1999 Chevrolet truck turned from Windmill Lane onto Montauk Highway without signaling, and they pulled it over. According to police, the driver had an open bottle of Ronrico Rum in the cabin. “I’m going to pick my wife up at Brent’s,” he told the arresting officer before failing a field sobriety test.

With his attorney, Trevor Darrell, by his side, he was arraigned Tuesday morning before Justice Lisa R. Rana. Reading from his record, she noted that in the D.W.I. charge yet unresolved, his breath test had produced a .16 reading, while Monday night’s test was recorded at .14. Like Mr. Mendez-Ventura, he faces misdemeanor charges of drunken driving and a felony charge of unlicensed driving.

An assistant county district attorney, Richard Migliore Jr., asked that bail be set at $2,000. “He is going to need much more than that,” Justice Rana replied, setting bail at $7,500. Mr. Uyaguari-Farez told the court he was not certain if he could come up with that amount, but did so later in the day after Mr. Darrell’s warning.

A call reporting a possible drunken driver brought Sag Harbor Village police to a parking lot off Main Street Saturday afternoon, where they found John Xavier Tracy III slouched over the wheel of a 2008 Dodge Ram pickup with his foot on the gas. Two open cans of Budweiser were in the cup holders, police said.

At Division Street headquarters, the 22-year-old Sag Harbor man’s breath test reportedly produced a reading just over .08, triggering a misdemeanor charge of D.W.I. Upon searching Mr. Tracy, police said they found a pill classified as a controlled drug, leading to another misdemeanor charge, possession of a controlled substance.

Justice Rana, who sits on the Sag Harbor Justice Court bench as well as East Hampton’s, freed him without bail, due to his local ties, but with a future date on her criminal calendar.

One of the buildings devastated by the fire that ripped through a portion of Sag Harbor’s Main Street two months ago still has not been properly shored up, village officials said yesterday.

According to a report from Paul J. Angelides, a consulting and forensic engineering firm in Syosset, the building at 96 Main Street, which housed Brown Harris Stevens, suffered major damage but can be restored and is not in danger of collapse. However, temporary bracing is needed, and to date the work has not been completed. The owners, the Katz family, under the name East End Land Corporation, want to have the work done, Thomas Preiato, the village building inspector said, but they need access from the neighboring Sag Harbor Cinema property and have not yet received it. 

Their two-story building, a mixed commercial-residential building with a second-floor apartment and offices below, sits to the south of a now-vacant lot where the Sag Harbor Cinema lobby stood, with its Art Deco sign facing out onto Main Street. The lot has been filled and graded and cordoned off by a plywood construction fence. The front of the cinema building was demolished the night of the fire (the auditorium remains), and the building to its north, at 84 Main Street, was demolished days later.

The Dec. 16 fire caused structural damage to 75 percent of the flat-roof building at 96 Main Street and its underlying ceiling joists, according to Adam C. Cassel, a chief civil and structural engineer at the firm. Non-load-bearing wood-framed interior partition walls on the second floor were damaged, “with much of the contents and interior finishes being reduced to debris and ash,” he said.

Water used to extinguish the blaze — which the fire marshal said started outside of the Compass building at 84 Main Street and quickly spread due to strong winds on the morning of the fire — leaked down into the first floor at 96 Main Sreet, causing widespread damage to the building’s interior, according to the report.

During his investigation, Mr. Cassel found that five joists over the first floor were cracked as the result of being weakened by a fire that occurred decades ago. “The pre-existing weaknesses caused multiple joists to sag and crack under the overbearing weight imposed by the water from the firefighting activity along with fire-damaged construction debris and contents on the second floor,” he wrote.

The report, prepared for Minogue Associates of Massapequa and submitted to the village, was written on Jan. 13 following the Dec. 23 inspection. Sag Harbor Village released it late last week.

The engineer said the building was stable and did not pose a hazard to the neighboring property to its south or to the public. However, he said, temporary bracing was necessary to provide lateral support for the “now-freestanding upper portion of the right side brick wall” until the roof could be rebuilt. A section of a chimney stack would need to be demolished after the bracing is completed.

Gerry Mallow owns the Sag Harbor Cinema property and has not yet given the Katz family permission to access their building from his property.

“They want to get moving and we want them to move,” Mr. Preiato said, adding that he cannot force Mr. Mallow to allow the neighbors access to the property, but that there is real estate law that would require access should it go to court. “Eventually it’s going to be a health and safety issue,” he said.

Mr. Cassel’s report also outlined structural repairs that will be needed to restore the building, including reframing the entire roof, replacing some of the wall framing, and reconstruction of the fire-damaged covered rear porch. The masonry has to be cleaned and sealed from the heavy soot and smoke deposits on the interior and exterior walls.

As myriad protests against President Donald J. Trump’s executive orders and apparent intentions continue around the country, tensions have mounted in the First Congressional District, where constituents have held rallies targeting Representative Lee I. Zeldin. Another is to be held in Riverhead, where Mr. Zeldin has an East End office, on Tuesday.

On Feb. 1, Representative Zeldin, who was re-elected by a substantial majority in November, cancelled a public appearance that was to be held in April at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton.

Although an office employee had initially said the cancellation was due to a scheduling conflict, Jennifer DiSiena, Mr. Zeldin’s communications director, said in an email on Tuesday that the event had been “co-opted, renamed, and rebranded” by “liberal obstructionists” who “have committed themselves to creating mass disruptions at public events for their own political theater.” As of yesterday, the event had not been rescheduled.

These constituents, Ms. DiSiena wrote, have “pledged allegiance to the ‘indivisible guide’ being funded and fueled by the far left nationally.” She apparently was referring to “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda,” a document that outlines grassroots organizing and advocacy.

On Tuesday, approximately 50 people held a rally outside the Suffolk County Supreme Court building in Riverhead. Participants marched to Mr. Zeldin’s office, on West Main Street, to demand a “town hall” meeting. “People tried to go upstairs” to deliver that demand, “but they had changed office hours to appointment only,” Eileen Duffy, who has formed a Facebook group called Let’s Visit Lee Zeldin, said yesterday. “Then we turned around and marched back in the rain,” said Ms. Duffy, who lives in Quogue.

Mr. Zeldin’s website has been updated, announcing that the Riverhead office will no longer be open for walk-in visits. Instead, the office — which continues to be open Tuesday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. — will only welcome visitors by appointment. A call to that office yesterday seeking information as to when and why the policy had been changed from walk-in to appointment was referred to his main office in Patchogue.

A call to that office was referred to Ms. DiSiena. “Due to the small size of the office, and the new disruption tactics of these liberal obstructionists locally and nationally, this office is now by appointment only,” she said in an email yesterday. “We established a satellite office in Riverhead to help meet the needs of the constituents of the East End. This office has proven to be a great resource for East End constituents.” Protesters are disrupting the activities of other tenants in the building, she added.

Ms. Duffy said the group had informed police and obtained a mass gathering permit for Tuesday’s rally. “We had wranglers keeping everybody on the sidewalk. There was absolutely no disruption of traffic,” she said.

The previous Tuesday, approximately 90 people gathered at the Riverhead Library to protest President Trump’s executive order barring refugees and others from the United States, as well as anyone from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which Mr. Zeldin supports. Mark Woolley, the congressman's district director, met with and listened to the constituents' concerns, Ms. Duffy said. The executive order drew large protests in cities and at many of the country’s international airports. The Jan. 31 protest, in turn, followed an event three days earlier in East Patchogue, at which the Rotary Club of Shirley and the Mastics honored Mr. Zeldin. Between 150 and 200 residents of the First District rallied outside the venue, and contradictory reports followed about what occurred.

In remarks distributed to multiple media organizations, Ms. DiSiena said protesters “were banging on car doors, jumping in front of cars, shining lights into cars, and yelling at attendees to harass them.” Protesters dispute that assertion.

Cindy Morris, who organized the protest, said yesterday that police officers never approached protesters during the event. “It was congested,” she said, “and perhaps it’s possible that the congressman’s people are interpreting that as people jumping in front of cars. However, at no time did people jump out to block any car.”

In an email yesterday, a spokesman for the Suffolk County Police Department would only say that no arrests had been made.

“We have a congressman who is refusing to hold town halls based on the erroneous claim that there was some disruptive behavior at an event,” Amy Turner, who lives in Wainscott, said in an email on Tuesday. In an opinion piece on the website of the online publication Southold Local on Monday, Ms. Turner alleged that since his re-election Mr. Zeldin had “insulted constituents who dare oppose his policies, refused repeated requests to schedule a town hall meeting, canceled an appearance where his constituents would finally have had an opportunity to question him directly, and then, taking a page right out of the Trump playbook, justified that cancellation by grossly misrepresenting the nature of a recent peaceful protest in East Patchogue.”

“The fact that he is insinuating that we were acting out of line is particularly upsetting to us because we are asking him to participate with us in the democratic process,” said Ms. Morris, who lives in Stony Brook and is a member of Time2Care Long Island, a group founded after the November election. “Now we need to have an appointment to go to his Riverhead office. He’s cutting us off from even visiting with his staff. If he does not hold public events that we are able to attend and have conversations with him, we are forced to attend private events so we can get his attention.”

For his part, on his Facebook page on Sunday, in what may have been a response to those who claim he is unwilling to meet with them, Mr. Zeldin wrote he “had a great weekend all around the district, including a public education forum at Longwood Middle School, Give a Kid a Smile event in Riverhead, Civil Air Patrol ball in Holbrook, Mastic Beach ambulance installation dinner in Wading River, and Smithtown G.O.P. Super Bowl brunch in Lake Ronkonkoma.”

Property owners in East Hampton Town could receive rebates of up to $15,000 toward replacing failed or inadequate septic waste systems if a proposal now being considered by officials goes ahead.

Money for the program would come from the 20-year extension of the community preservation fund 2-percent tax on most real estate sales, which was approved by voters in November.

Speaking at an East Hampton Town Board meeting on Tuesday, NancyLynn Thiele, one of the town’s lawyers, described the draft of a two-track effort to eliminate cesspools and increase protections for drinking water and the town’s bays, harbors, and creeks.

 Rebates would be tiered equally for commercial and residential properties, and properties in East Hampton Village and on the East Hampton side of Sag Harbor would be eligible. As proposed, the highest rebates — 100 percent of the construction cost of a new, low-nitrogen system to a maximum of $15,000, would be available for sites that are, for the most part, designated as water protection districts.

If the measure were approved by the town board all new construction would have to have a low-nitrogen sanitary system as would any business or house undergoing substantial expansion. Substantial expansion would  be defined in the final law, Ms. Thiele told the board, and it could be an increase of more than half of a house’s floor area or estimated value.

“New construction, you have got to have new technology,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said at one point during Tuesday’s discussion.

Roughly 12,000 parcels with waste-leaking cesspools exist in the town, and more than 6,000 are adjacent to bodies of water, would have priority for funding, according to Mr. Cantwell. “Untreated water seeps into the ground, into groundwater, and flows into the waters of our town,” he said.

Outside of the high-priority areas, property owners in a second tier who replace cesspools could get up to half the cost of replacement, up to $10,000. For residents with modest incomes, rebates of up to three-quarters of the cost could be available.

A third tier, for properties that do not have old-fashioned cesspools but whose systems do not meet current standards, would reimburse property owners for up to a quarter of the cost of repair or replacement, with a $5,000 maximum.

Ms. Thiele said the town program might initially follow the Suffolk Department of Health Services’ dissolved nitrogen standard of 19 milligrams per liter. As more new sanitary waste systems become available and are approved by the department, she said, that standard could fall to 10 mg. per liter. She also said that property owners would have to provide the county with a maintenance and inspection agreement in order to get town rebates. “The systems will only remove nitrogen if they are maintained,” she said.

According to Joe Densieski of Wastewater Works in Riverhead, the town’s proposed 100-percent rebate might not cover all of the costs associated with installing a low nitrogen system. Though the day of construction bill could be as low as $12,000 for the system itself, surveys, permits, and engineering fees could add as much as $3,000. A required twice-a-year maintenance plan and inspections of filters, sludge levels, and electrical components would add $750 for three years, he said in a phone interview yesterday.

If toilet and household drains were only flowing to an aged cinderblock cesspool, a new drain field of cast concrete rings would add another $3,000 to $3,500 to the project. “Some jobs come out more; some come out less,” Mr. Densieski said.

Jeremy Samuelson, the president of Concerned Citizens of Montauk who attended Tuesday’s presentation, said, “I think this is a good start. The public is going to have plenty to say. Getting this right is going to take several iterations. It is not going to be exactly right out of the gate.”

Mr. Cantwell said that East Hampton voters’ approval of the preservation fund extension to 2050 would make up to $200 million available for water quality efforts over time, according to estimates. The November referendum added 33 years to the life of the fund and allowed for up to 20 percent to be used for groundwater and surface water protection.

A wrinkle has emerged, however, Town Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said at Tuesday’s meeting. According to a new interpretation of the preservation fund law, water quality money could only be used in the year that it was collected. This is unlike the land-acquisition portion of the fund, which provides that money can be held in reserve and accumulated.

Councilman Fred Overton wondered Tuesday about someone who wanted to take advantage of the rebate but whose house was outside the high-priority area, using himself as an example. “Am I and people my age going to be able to afford a new system? Let’s say I can’t do the right thing, but I want to do the right thing. Will it be affordable for somebody in my situation?” Mr. Overton lives on a quarter-acre lot in Springs, where he has only had to have his waste system pumped once during the time he has owned the house.

“It’s really a question of how aggressive we want to be,” Mr. Cantwell said. “Why should I, as a homeowner, replace a system that is functioning? It’s a good question.”

Concerned Citizens of Montauk, which Mr. Samuelson heads, conducts water tests at as many as 27 sites in East Hampton Town. He said that the proposal was targeting the right contaminant by going after nitrogen and that new sanitary systems would cut levels of other pollutants as well.

The list of high-priority areas for which the greatest rebates would be available includes parcels near all of the town’s harbors and navigable creeks, Georgica Pond, Fort Pond, and Wainscott Pond. Also listed are the Montauk downtown business district, the Lake Montauk dock area, Ditch Plain, and Camp Hero. The Three Mile Harbor and Hog Creek watersheds are included as well, as are high-density portions of Springs.

The East Hampton Town Natural Resources Department would oversee the rebate program, Ms. Thiele said.

If the early days of 2017 are defined by social activism, then Sag Harbor is positively visionary. Back in September 2016, a group of residents and parents created a groundswell movement that, in December, resulted in the overwhelming defeat of a proposed synthetic turf field at the Pierson Middle and High School.

The group has recently resurfaced, albeit with less intensity, to ensure that the community votes on Wednesday to approve the district’s revised plan for allnatural grass fields.

Diane Hewett, a vocal opponent of turf and a key member of the Keep It Real  group, called the decision in favor of grass “a no-brainer.” The change-of-use proposition comes with a more appealing bottom line, two new grass fields, a new multipurpose court, and an upgraded common play area at the elementary school. However, Ms. Hewett expressed frustration that the community seems less engaged or, perhaps, unaware that there is still one more vote to be cast.

Only two parents attended a recent school board meeting at which the board unveiled the revised plan, a stark contrast to the full-house meetings last year. Apparently some Sag Harbor residents see next week’s vote as a fait accompli with the major battle already won.

For Jill Musnicki, a parent of a Pierson Middle School student, Wednesday’s vote represents the final hurdle. Ms. Musnicki and Ms. Hewett were instrumental in raising awareness of the turf-versus-grass issue as far back as March 2016. They set up an online petition alerting residents of the school’s plans for a synthetic field and of the potential health hazards of manmade turf. Over 400 community members signed the petition, and the movement took root.

Ms. Musnicki turned to social media — recently referred to as hashtag activism — and mobilized a Facebook page called Say No to Toxic Turf. It was recently changed to Just Say Yes to Natural Turf. Support was overwhelming, she said, not only within the community but in other commnities throughout the country where parents were waging grass-versus-turf wars. She called Sag Harbor’s victory “a game changer.”

One group that “friended” Sag Harbor on Facebook is Rockwood Turf, started by a concerned citizen in St. Louis County, Mo. The battle between the school and concerned parents over the conversion of football fields from natural grass to synthetic turf began in 2015. In a recent Facebook post, Rockwood Turf showed support for Diane Hewett’s plea to “vote yes” on Feb. 15, with an emphatic “Yassss!”

At the center of the health debate are tiny granules of rubber used in artificial turf across the country. Crumb rubber fill — intended to provide athletes a safer, more stable surface and schools with low maintenance costs — is made of pulverized tires and drew public concern after a 2014 NBC report cited potential risks. Although the NBC report emphasized that no empirical evidence had been found linking crumb rubber to health risks, the issue sparked wide health risks, the issue sparked widespread concern over lead contamination and carcinogens such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, present in the material.

“In Sag Harbor,” Ms. Musnicki said, “it wasn’t the case of simply putting in a football pitch or a soccer field. The artificial turf was going to cover the entire backyard of the school, which meant students would eat their lunch out there, something the Centers for Disease Control specifically advises not to do.”

In a 2008 Consumer Reports article, the federal agency issued cautionary advice: “Eating while on the field or turf is discouraged. Avoid contaminating drinking containers with dust and fibers from the field. When not drinking, close them and keep them in a bag, cooler, or other covered container on the side of the field.”

According to Ms. Hewett, what had been a sleeper concern shifted to the spotlight largely because of unprecedented parent involvement, including protest memes on social media and door-to-door canvassing “But we’re not done,” she said. “We need people to come out and vote on Feb. 15 and put this issue to rest.”

Susan Lamontagne, an outspoken member of the community, guaranteed that Sag Harbor activists would become increasingly active leading up to the vote. Ms. Musnicki and others will head back to social media while another Sag Harbor resident, Lindsay Morris, who made phone calls in December to “a very long list of people,” will do so again.

“There will be a lot of visibility,” Ms. Lamontagne promised before adding, “It may seem like all is quiet but that’s only because the contentious part of this debate is over.”

Correction: Rockwood Turf was started by a concerned citizen in St. Louis County, Mo., not a parent as a previous version of this story said. 

On the first day of a new quarter at East Hampton High School last week, the students in Andy Rigby’s woodworking and manufacturing classes wasted no time getting to work on the project at hand, each bending industriously over a portion of what would become the second hull of a 26-foot catamaran they are building under the guidance of David Ryan of the Montauk Catamaran Company.

“The biggest challenge is the short periods, but these guys are figuring it out almost like a factory with shifts now,” Mr. Ryan said on Jan. 31 as he watched an afternoon class carrying out his instructions. In the week since then, he said on Tuesday, “they’ve only gotten better.” Mr. Ryan had worked with separate students over the previous two weeks to build the first hull.

“What has just been exhilarating to me is watching guys stay a couple minutes when they have to finish things and then just seamlessly pass things on to the next class. It’s just so fun to see.”

By the time he is finished working at the school in late February, he hopes both hulls will be closed up and “ready to be glassed and painted.”

Mr. Ryan, who has a daughter at the high school, has already built two similar boats: the Mon Tiki, a 38-footer that launched in 2012, and the 63-foot Mon Tiki Largo, which he completed last summer. His apprentice builders were adults in those cases, but like the students who are putting together what will be the Mini Tiki, they had never built a boat before either.

He pitched the project to the school’s principal, Adam Fine, Mr. Rigby, and Heather Evans, who, as the unified arts coordinator, oversees both the fine arts and technology education programs like woodworking and manufacturing.

“When you get a project like this, you have to take advantage of it,” Mr. Fine said as he visited the classroom last week to check things out.

Mr. Ryan supplied all the raw materials, from the marine-grade plywood to the glue and epoxy, making the collaboration a win-win for the school. The crossbeams, masts, and rudders were already finished, and his workers had cut out the bulkheads that give the hulls their structural integrity.

The hulls and crossbeams will eventually be lashed together with rope, Polynesian-style, but outside the school shop. The boat will have a 15-foot beam when it is finished.

“We were at the point where we were going to see a lot of pretty impressive visual growth in the project,” Mr. Ryan said. That seemed a good point to bring the students into the process.

The students have already learned some of the skills they need to do the project. Mr. Rigby teaches the basics in Woodworking 101. More advanced students move on to building construction, and “then we start introducing machinery to them,” he said. “In a manufacturing class we take an item and try to market it, make a prototype and break down the process to figure out how to make it faster and still keep the quality up.” Adirondack chairs in the hallway near the woodshop are the product of that class.

For this project, “We get the kids in here and tell them what we’re hoping to achieve in a class period,” Mr. Rigby explained, and then they get to work. They are “learning the terms behind boating, the ideas of building,” and that this sort of construction is different from building a table or a cabinet. “Some of the cuts don’t have to be as precise.”

“What I would hope that they would learn is that most things are not that hard; what you need is somebody to show you how easy it is,” Mr. Ryan said. “If you get shown that enough times in enough ways, you learn that the world is figure-outable,” a lesson that applies beyond the classroom as well.

“I want to teach people to be confident in their judgment,” he said. “You might make a mistake. That’s part of learning. It’s not a big deal. Use your confidence judiciously as a tool to solve things that you come up against.”

The first day the students walked in “they looked so lost,” Mr. Ryan said. “Two days later, they don’t look lost at all, they look like builders.”

Working off plans by James Wharram, a noted British designer of multihull boats, they were at first charged with gluing and sanding as the hulls were assembled.

Now they are doing epoxy joinery — “We call it plastic welding,” Mr. Ryan said — and learning to work with a material they have never used before.

He hopes to spend two or three more weeks in Mr. Rigby’s classroom before he heads to Maryland to collect Mon Tiki Largo from its winter storage spot and begin readying his fleet for the busy charter season ahead.

Community engagement is a key part of his company’s mission, and working in the school “seemed like a natural extension of that,” Mr. Ryan said. He takes school groups, scouts, and nonprofit groups out on the boat as part of what he calls the Mon Tiki Floating Classroom Project during the spring and fall. The cost to him is nominal, and the benefits are many. “The boat is happier moving than sitting, and I’m happier moving than sitting.”

He expects to launch the Mini Tiki sometime this summer. It and the other boats in the Montauk Catamaran Company fleet will sail out of the Montauk Yacht Club this summer.

East Hampton schools will be closed for the second consecutive day on Friday after about a foot of snow fell in the area on Thursday. 

The East Hampton School District had a recorded message sent to parents around 5 p.m. on Thursday. Richard Burns, the district superintendent, said school officials were concerned about student safety. The roads are expected to be a "sheet of ice" on Friday, he said, as the snow will not melt by the morning because of the frigid temperatures overnight. 

The storm is winding down this evening, and the blizzard warning that went into effect at 3 a.m. expired at 6 p.m. However, the forecast calls for widespread blowing of snow before 9 p.m., with wind chill temperatures of between zero and 10 overnight.

There is a chance of flurries after 10 a.m., but the forecast is for it to be mostly sunny, with a high near 28, according to the National Weather Service. Wind chill temperatures will be between -5 and 5 degrees. It will be breezy with a west wind of 18 to 23 miles per hour. 

The Amagansett, Montauk, Sag Harbor, Springs, Southampton, and Wainscott School Districts also announced closures. The Ross School will be closed, as well. 

Suffolk County and both East Hampton and Southampton Towns declared snow emergencies on Thursday. 

Just after noon on Monday, a gusty day on the East End, the East Hampton Fire Department was called out to a structure fire at 2 Sawmill Lane, off Roberts Lane in East Hampton. Firefighters made haste and quickly put a stop to a blaze fueled by a leak in a gas line inside the house.

Gerry Turza, the first assistant fire chief, said he arrived within four minutes. As he turned onto Sawmill Lane, he said, he saw flames and smoke break through a first-floor window. Workers had called 911.

Chief Turza found the fire, in a laundry room next to the garage, rapidly extending, fueled by winds that were blowing smoke and flames back through the broken window. The East End was under a high-wind warning Monday, with winds out of the northwest at 25 to 35 miles per hour and gusts up to 60.

The laundry room was being renovated. During demolition, a saw cut into a gas line, according to Tom Baker, the East Hampton Town fire marshal, who investigated the cause of the blaze. Workers had disconnected the gas dryer from the line, he said, but failed to shut off the line to the house, and then cut part of a line feeding a gas fireplace in the kitchen, which shared a wall with the laundry room.

Three workers were in the room when they cut the line, which “blasted the window out,” Chief Turza said. They were lucky, he said. One had a bump on his head, sustained when he ran out of the room, but otherwise they were unhurt. 

The laundry room had already been stripped down to the studs, allowing flames to spread quickly up a wall and into the ceiling, the chief said. Because there was no drywall, which acts as a fire barrier, damage was exacerbated. The fire reached the floor joists on the second floor. There was extensive damage to the first floor from heat and smoke, though the flames were contained mainly to the laundry room.

A firefighter shut off the gas. “Within just a touch over three minutes of the first engine pulling on scene, we had the main body of the fire knocked down,” Chief Turza said. “We really had to move. Thank God there were no injuries. Fed by the gas and pushed by the wind, it could have been a lot worse . . . a few more minutes, it would have been a whole different story. The members did an excellent job.”

Mr. Baker agreed. “They really did save the guy’s house.”

While some firefighters were put back in service soon after, others remained on the scene for about an hour. The department’s full complement responded, though only one engine and a tanker were utilized. The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association also responded. No injuries were reported.

Some may recall a similar gas explosion in February 2015, at a house being demolished in Water Mill. Two workers were injured in that fire after accidentally cutting a gas line.

This article was updated with the version that appeared in print on Feb. 16, 2017. 

The spirited group of Sag Harbor parents and residents, victorious in December’s shutout of plans for a synthetic turf field at Pierson Middle-High School, will return to vote Wednesday, Feb. 15, on a proposal for an all-natural grass field instead.

“It’s a redirection of funds,” explained Katy Graves, Sag Harbor's superintendent. “We need a majority approval since the 2013 vote was earmarked for a turf field.”

While the new proposal’s money is still allocated for athletic needs, the revised version includes the use of natural grass as well as several multipurpose surfaces and a new playing area for the elementary school. The vote on this change-of-use proposition will determine whether the community grants permission to the school for the money to be redirected.

Sag Harbor’s “turf wars,” as the often contentious 2016 campaign came to be known, regularly drew 40 to 50 vocal parents and residents to school board meetings and forums. Emotions ran high with Main Street and social media abuzz with impassioned cries from both sides, and persuasive yard signs everywhere. Ultimately, the vote against a synthetic field was a resounding 1,016 to 135.

By stark contrast, last week’s presentation of the back-up plan for the grass field was attended by only two parents. Although this could be interpreted as a victory in the bag for the “Keep It Real” side, as proponents of the natural field are calling their campaign, Ms. Graves believes that the Feb. 15 vote will be well attended.

Sag Harbor School District voters can cast ballots in the Pierson High School Gym from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

An East Hampton attorney who was barred from the practice of law in August for “mental incompetence” has been charged with stealing over $500,000 from the estate of a North Fork woman, and with several more crimes including theft from another lawyer.

Kyle Thomas Lynch, 42, turned himself in yesterday morning at the district attorney’s office in Riverside to face charges of second-degree felony grand larceny. He was then transported to East Hampton Village police headquarters for processing, and to East Hampton Town Justice Court, where he was arraigned ion six felony charges before Town Justice Court before Justice Lisa R. Rana. His lawyer, Craig McElwee, entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

According to the D.A.’s economic crimes bureau, which has been investigating the matter in cooperation with village police for a year and a half, Mr. Lynch took money from the estate of Helen Chalmers, who died in the fall of 2013, and deposited it into the business account of his law firm, Bainton Lynch, specialists in real estate.

While the alleged thefts were happening, he was also donating money from the Chalmers estate to various governmental organizations. Those donations were documented by The Suffolk Times in July 2014. “Shortly before last month’s vote on a resolution to accept a $150,000 bequest from the estate of Helen Chalmers, Greenport School District Superintendent Michael Comanda asked the Board of Education if anyone knew of the recently deceased Orient resident,” The Times reported. “No hands were raised.”

Village police charge that Mr. Lynch did not limit his alleged thievery to the dead woman’s estate. Another victim was another lawyer, Carl Irace, who was an associate in the Bainton Lynch firm. The police indicated yesterday that Mr. Lynch had drained most of the firm’s equity funds. Bainton Lynch was on Much­more Lane, in village jurisdiction.

Mr. Irace contacted police after he noticed a discrepancy on two of his credit card statements. “He came in and made a complaint to us,” Detective Steve Sheades said yesterday. Mr. Lynch allegedly took out two credit cards in Mr. Irace’s name, running up charges of over $50,000, the detective said.

Another victim was said to have been a client of the firm, Thomas Rudegeair. His case involved money held in escrow; police say, among other things, that $80,000 of that money was diverted to the firm.

The charges include second-degree felony grand larceny, identity theft, illegal possession of another person’s identity information, and grand larceny third degree.

In addition to the Greenport School District’s 2014 windfall, The Suffolk Times reported that “Oysterponds School District, Eastern Long Island Hospital, and St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church in Greenport each received $10,000. Floyd Memorial Library in Greenport and the Orient Fire Department received $5,000 each. So did the woman who delivered Ms. Chalmers’s mail.”

The grievance committee of New York State’s Ninth Judicial District barred Mr. Lynch from practicing law last summer “based upon his admitted mental incapacitation due to mental infirmity or illness.” Bail was set at $50,000 which was not immediately posted.

This story has been updated from its original version.