The Towns of East Hampton and Southampton are under a state of emergency due to blizzard conditions Saturday. 

The South Fork is forecasted to get 12 to 18 inches of snow, with winds gusting 30 to 55 miles per hour. Whiteout conditions and hazardous driving are to be expected. By midmorning downed trees and power lines were already being reported, and volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel were being called in to stand by at their headquarters. 

Residents are being encouraged to stay off the roads. Vehicles parked in the roadway should be moved so that snowplows can clear the snow. Road closures from flooding in low-lying areas are expected later on Saturday. Heavy winds and a lunar tide expected to be 3 to 4 feet above normal will result in moderate flooding. 

“Our Highway Department is busy plowing roads but residents should stay inside and off the roads and allow our plows to do their jobs and let emergency vehicles pass safely when they are called to emergencies," Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said Saturday. 

Emergency operations centers in both towns have been opened to field emergency calls related to the storm. The Town of East Hampton's center, which opened at 9 a.m. and will be kept open throughout the storm, can be reached at 631-324-0288. For immediate emergencies call 911.  

Southampton Town's center can be reached at 631-728-3405.

Power outages should be reported directly to PSEG-Long Island at 888-730-3774, town officials said. In the event of a power outage, warming centers will be opened in the Town of East Hampton at the Senior Citizens Center on Sprongs-Fireplace Road and the Montauk Playhouse Community Center. No word yet where the warming centers would be in Southampton. 

Check back for more information as it becomes available. For a list of cancellations and closures, click here.

Have a photo you want to share with us? Email [email protected] , Tweet us at @EHStar, or tag us on Instagram @easthamptonstar. 

Schools across the South Fork will have delayed openings on Monday due to the impact of this weekend's snowfall.

The East Hampton, Amagansett, Sag Harbor, Bridgehampton, Wainscott, Sagaponack, Montauk, Springs, and Southampton School Districts will all begin classes two hours later than usual. The Ross School will also have a two-hour delayed start. 

In Amagansett, classes will begin at 10 a.m. Montauk's prekindergarten class will begin at 10:30 a.m. For Springs, classes will begin at 10:20 a.m. but there will be no before-school academic support, music, or morning pre-kindergarten at Most Holy Trinity

In Sag Harbor, there will also be no morning pre-kindergarten classes. The district has also announced winter bus stops are in effect, the locations of which may be found on the district's website at sagharborschools.org.

The blizzard may have kept a lot of people inside, but emergency personnel, many of them volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians, didn't have the luxury of hunkering down over the weekend. Departments responded to fires, car accidents, diabetic and seizure calls, and even when the snow stopped, the calls did not. Late Sunday afternoon, rescuers were called to pull people out of a Jeep that partially sank into the water at a Bridgehampton beach while its occupants were surveying the snowstorm's damage. 

A new Jeep Wrangler pickup truck plunged into an icy hole on Scott Cameron Beach, near the opening of Mecox Beach, stranding its driver, Joe Farrell of Bridgehampton, a prominent luxury house builder, and his son, Joey.  

Johnathon Duran and his friend Brandon La Ponte were "checking out what the recent storm Jonas did to the beach and how the ocean looked afterwards," he said in an email Monday. They were standing on a dune when the Jeep circled round them. "We watched the Jeep drive straight into a huge sinkhole right next to the bay." They called Southampton Town police, who received the 911 call at 4:25 p.m. The Bridgehampton Fire Department was also called to take its boat to the beach for a possible water rescue.

The two inside the Jeep, which was now partially immersed in seawater, were panicking, Mr. Duran said. "They thought the best course of action was to swim across this sinkhole but we assured them that help was on the way and to get to the bed of their truck." The two followed Mr. Duran's advice. "They stayed safe and afloat until the police arrived." In one of the photos Mr. Duran shot with his cellphone Joey Farrell can be seen giving two thumbs-up as help arrived.

The police found a long wooden plank and ran it from solid sand to the bed of the Jeep, and the driver and passenger walked across safely. Mr. Farrell and his son were not injured.  The Jeep, with its motor filled with saltwater, was pulled out of the hole Sunday evening with a payloader, Mr. Duran said. Southampton Town Police Sgt. Michael Joyce said the vehicle was taken to Corwith's Auto Body Shop in Water Mill. 

Earlier in the weekend, another Jeep, this one a Cherokee, was damaged when a tree fell onto its trunk area as it was driving on Swamp Road near Route 114 in East Hampton at around 8:45 a.m. The driver was not hurt. East Hampton firefighters helped to close the road. 

The accident off Route 114 was one of just four accidents East Hampton Town that police responded to over the weekend, none of which resulted in serious injuries. "Over all, our call volume was much lower than usual, and consisted largely of alarms, road hazards, wires down, and fire chief's investigations," Police Chief Michael Sarlo said. The day shift on Saturday saw the highest volume of calls over the weekend, with about 40 calls over eight hours, he said.

"We appreciate the public limiting the driving and taking it slow," Chief Sarlo said. "Between preparing for the worst accumulation possibilities and working with the [Emergency Operations Center] and the Highway Department, Marine Division keeping tabs on the coastal erosion out in Montauk and some flooding issues like Gerard Drive, it was a busy weekend, of course, but we made out fairly well, all things considered." 

On Saturday afternoon, though, Montauk firefighters got busy all of a sudden. The department was called to two houses within five minutes. Chief Joe Lenahan said a high-voltage wire snapped at the base on the road, falling and causing an electrical fire next to a house on East Lake Drive around 1:30 p.m. The pole snapped from the wind and weight of the snow. "Winds were gusting about 50 miles per hour at the time of both calls," he said. 

The second call came in at 1:35 p.m., when a chimney fire broke out Miller Avenue, near Ditch Plain. Chief Lenahan said there was minimal damage. About 30 firefighters were at the firehouse during the storm, allowing for a quick response. "My people are amazing," he said. 

Over in Sag Harbor on Saturday, while snow continued to fall a snowblower erupted into flames as it was being used around 10:30 a.m. on Harbor Watch Court. When firefighters arrived, the homeowner had covered it about three-quarters of the way with snow to put out the flames, according to Sag Harbor Chief Tom Gardella. A dry chemical extinguisher was used to extinguish the rest of the flames. 

A few hours later, at about 2 p.m., Sag Harbor firefighters had to take an engine for a ferry ride to stand by at the Shelter Island Fire Department's headquarters while firefighters from the island, with the help of the Greenport Fire Department, battled a house fire on Penny's Path. An emergency gasoline-powered generator was the culprit there. No one was hurt. 

Sag Harbor firefighters spent the Sunday afternoon clearing hydrants of snow. Then, at night, Sag Harbor firefighters and the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps were called to Harborview Drive when carbon monoxide alarms went off around 10:45 p.m. Chief Gardella said a toxic amount of the gas was found in the basement, but the family at home was all right. The problem was likely with the furnace, though the department could not pinpoint the problem and called the service company.

In the early morning hours on Monday, at about 2:40, the department was called to Pine Neck Avenue in Noyac, where there was smoke inside a house. A ceiling fan had sparked and was smoldering, Chief Gardella said. He said there was a problem with the voltage to the house, which may have been caused by high winds during the snowstorm. It could have resulted in a major fire, he said. "Luckily, it just started in the ceiling fan." 

While the temperature warmed up, ice was still a concern Monday morning, resulting in most schools having a two-hour delay. It would seem most used caution on the roads. Ice did cause one accident on Noyac Road near Locust Drive in Noyac at about 9:30 a.m. Chief Gardella said a passenger car and a truck were involved in a rear-end collision, and the driver of the car was taken to Southampton Hospital with minor shoulder and neck pain.

Correction: Joe Farrell's passenger in his Jeep when it sank on the beach was his son, Joey, not a female passenger as originally reported.

Julie Lofstad has won a seat on the Southampton Town Board in a special election held Tuesday, giving Supervisor Jay Schneiderman the Democratic majority on the board.

Ms. Lofstad received about 62 percent of the vote, while her opponent, Richard W. Yastrzemski, a Republican, took in about 38 percent, according to unofficial results posted on the Suffolk County Board of Elections website Tuesday night. She ran on the Democratic, Independence, and Conservative lines.

Ms. Lofstad will be filling a vacancy left by Brad Bender, who resigned amid drug charges in November. When Mr. Schneiderman, a member of the Independence Party who was also endorsed by the Democrats, won the supervisor seat in November — his opponent was Mr. Yastrzemski — he thought he had a majority on the board. However, by the end of the month, Mr. Bender was under arrest, pleaded guilty, and subsequently resigned. The board has been split 2 to 2, and Mr. Schneiderman has held off on making several important appointments, including hiring a new town attorney. 

Ms. Lofstad, a Hampton Bays resident, has run a commercial fishing business with her husband for the past 15 years. She has worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

In the 19 years that the Springs School fourth graders have been putting on an opera, the storylines have often been inspired, more or less, by something that is true about Springs. There may be settings inspired by actual places, characters based on students themselves, and the reflection of school or community spirit. This year’s storyline, though, falls into the “more” category when it comes to inspiration from true events.

The opera, titled “The Peacock’s Tale,” tells of two brothers who immigrate to the United States in the early 1960s without knowing any English. They introduce the sport of soccer to their peers, which ultimately unites the school around a common language — the language of sports — and helps the two brothers make friends and start to learn English.

That really happened in 1962, when Porfirio and Joseph Goncalves arrived in the United States from Portugal to live with their family on a farm in Springs. This year’s Springs fourth graders took the Goncalves brothers’ story and re-imagined it with themselves as the characters — although the main characters’ names and basic plot are the same — along with their own interactions and songs, which ultimately became “The Peacock’s Tale.”

“Where I came from, Portugal, we didn’t have the facilities or anything like we had once we got here,” Porfirio Goncalves told the fourth graders when he visited the school in December. “We were totally surprised with what we found. Sports, soccer especially, made a lot of friends for me. It made it a lot easier for me. I’ve still got a lot of friends today because of it. . . . But it was not easy. We came to Springs not speaking the language.”

Some of the themes are perhaps especially relevant now, given today’s challenges teaching students for whom English is not a first language. Springs has many students in that category, and even has a bilingual kindergarten class.

Porfirio and Joseph are main characters in the opera, but so are a couple of other names well known here: Fred Yardley, a longtime teacher and coach at the Springs School, and Charlie Marder, who befriended the two brothers soon after they arrived here and remains their friend to this day. In a phone interview yesterday, Mr. Marder said he feels flattered to be the inspiration for a character in the opera, and said he vividly recalls his days at the school when the Goncalves brothers arrived.

“It was kind of remarkable,” he said. “They brought so much to the classroom in terms of their cultural background at the time. One of the great things about Springs has always been its social diversity, but, again, at that point, there were artists, writers, Bonackers, fishermen, carpenters, farmers, and tradesmen, but there wasn’t really a Portugese population at all, other than their grandfather. It brought an awakening of the world out there. It’s one thing to have new kids at school, but it was sort of exponential to have new kids from another country in school.”

And where does the peacock fit in? In the opera, she is the narrator — a character created to help move the story along, since the two brothers don’t really speak English in the first act — but she is based on an actual peacock who lived on the family farm on Fireplace Road.

That the opera is in its 19th year is a source of school pride, and it is a vehicle for deep, interdisciplinary learning, according to Sue Ellen O’Connor and Colleen McGowan, the teachers who first established the opera program in Springs based on a model created by New York’s Metropolitan Opera Guild. The students, who call themselves the 84 Hear Us Roar Opera Company based on the number of students in the grade, created their own characters, wrote the lyrics, composed the music with help from teachers and other professionals, and designed costumes, makeup, and sets.

When they wrote the plot, Ms.

O’Connor said, she saw the students arrive at the conclusion and a lesson “logically and organically through self-discovery.”

“You don’t want to enforce a moral. I don’t want it to be a fable,” she said. “I want it to be based on children’s real experiences.”

She and Ms. McGowan, along with Eileen Goldman, the stage director, Lisa Weston, the stage manager and set designer, Angelina Modica, the musical director and co-composer, Kyril Bromley, the arranger, accompanist, and co-composer, and Sara Faulkner, who is in charge of costumes and makeup, all have high expectations for the students in their various roles — and the students rise to the occasion every year.

“I think they find out they can do much more than they think they can do,” Ms. O’Connor said. “There is huge growth. It’s a tremendous confidence-builder. There is self-esteem and empowerment, and it’s authentic.”

The students have seen all of the previous operas and want theirs to be just as good.

“There’s a built-in desire to achieve,” Ms. O’Connor said. “It shows a real sense of cooperative learning. This particular opera celebrates the diversity of Springs and carries out the theme of acceptance, the value of community, and working together.”

Older students come back to help the fourth graders. Tiffany Farez, a seventh grader, came in to coach Sophia Rodriguez, who plays the peacock, on her acting skills, because she knows how much hard work it takes to put on the opera. “You need other people to help you out. If you don’t have other people to support you, then the whole thing falls apart,” Tiffany said.

For her part, Sophia is enjoying the peacock costume, which itself was a team effort. The feathers came from a Halloween costume worn last year by an older student, Ella Eggert. “My favorite part is the feathers,” Sophia said. “It’s a really fun feeling, and it’s amazing how everything in the show looks.”

Over the years, the operas have ranged in length from 12 minutes to just short of an hour. This year’s show will run about 50 minutes. When it opens on Wednesday at Guild Hall, it will be the culmination of more than four months of work. Show time on Wednesday is at 7 p.m. Next Thursday’s show times are 9:30 and 11 a.m., and the closing show will be Friday, Jan. 22, at 9:30 a.m.

“The school funds this very generously. It’s well worth it, and it involves the entire grade,” Ms. O’Connor said. “It’s nice that the school continues to support it.”

Isaac Rodriguez, who stars as Porfirio, is enjoying both being onstage and being backstage because of all the lights and machinery. “It feels like I could do this every single year,” he said, “and I wouldn’t mind it at all.”

One of our smallest amphibians, the spring peeper, a tree frog that breeds in late March and April, was singing in Hither Woods on Sunday, when the air temperature had reached almost 60 degrees, according to Michael Odestick and his wife, Kelly, who were out for a walk. On the same day, one of our largest birds, the bald eagle, was seen on Long Pond south of Sag Harbor by Ellen Stahl. 

As the temperature dove down to near freezing the following day, it is unlikely that peepers will stay above ground and sing for the rest of January and all of February. But from all appearances, we’ll be able to see bald eagles flying around or roosting on any given day throughout the remainder of the winter.

As a boy growing up in Mattituck on the North Fork in the 1940s and ’50s with a great interest in birds, I never saw a bald eagle locally and never heard or read of one being observed. There were many ospreys, but nary an eagle.

When I came back to Long Island in 1974 after 15 years on the West Coast, I was even more interested in birds, but still, one almost never saw or heard of a bald eagle here. In 1974 Newsday carried a story of a local man having illegally shot an eagle in a Bridgehampton field. By then all eagles, ospreys, and hawks were protected by law. Indeed, the bald eagle, our national bird, was one of the first species to be given endangered status during the Nixon administration of the late 1960s and early 1970s after the Endangered Species Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president.

In 1978 during the annual January waterfowl count, I saw an immature bald eagle at the edge of Georgica Pond with the late Chris McKeever, a lawyer-naturalist who lived in Water Mill. From then on an eagle or two was seen locally every two or three years, almost always in the late fall or winter. In the 1990s one visited the East Hampton Town landfill most winters and fed on gulls, rats, and carrion, but area-wide eagles were still very scarce and most Christmas bird counts held around Long Island didn’t record a single one.

Come the new millennium, eagles began to be seen every year, mostly in the winter, and one or two were recorded on bird counts across the North and South Forks. Then in December of 2008, an observer on the Montauk Count assigned to Gardiner’s Island thought she saw a nest that was much too big for an osprey’s. Could it be an eagle’s nest? From that moment on, birders and wildlife specialists were on the lookout for breeding eagles across Long Island. They were already well establishing in New York State, say, along the Hudson River, by that time; why not here on Long Island, as well?

Two years later this same woman was back doing the count on Gardiner’sIsland. The nest was larger and two eagles were hanging around it. She had almost confirmed the first re-nesting of the bald eagle on Long Island since a pair last nested there in 1936. At least 72 years had elapsed between nestings.

Then we learned that a pair of eagles was not only nesting on Gardiner’s Island again in 2013, but were joined by a nesting pair on the Nature Conservancy’s Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island. Then a third nest popped up in 2014, where she worked as a ranger on the William Floyd Estate in part of the Fire Island National Seashore complex located in Mastic Beach. There may be even more bald eagle nests on Long Island that we have yet to discover.

At any rate, the Endangered Species Act worked; the bald eagle’s status was upgraded to merely “threatened” in 1995 and then to a species of “special concern” in 2007. Yes, the bald eagle is back, and eastern Long Island is only the tip of an expanding iceberg.

If the eagles generally fledge two young every year here, one would think that they would be more visible in the off-season than in previous years. That is precisely the case. The most recent Long Island Christmas bird counts produced a record number of bald eagles. To begin with, on Jan. 2, as part of the Orient count, our mystery observer, Mary Laura Lamont, and her husband Eric Lamont, botanists, observed three — an adult and two immature eagles — while on Jessup’s Neck in the Morton Wildlife Refuge, and a fourth off North Haven, which joined the first three as they flew to the north end of North Haven.

On the same day, Arthur Goldberg and I counted two immature eagles in their territory east of Sag Harbor. They flew from the tip of Cedar Point in the county park over to Mashomack. That makes six between the four of us and the final results have yet to be compiled. On the weekend of the Montauk count, Dec. 15 and 16, Terry Sullivan was covering Fresh Pond on the Water Mill-to-East Hampton Village portion of the count when an immature flew over his head at about 3:30 in the afternoon.

Last Friday, Terry’s friend, Greg Boeklin, who is keeping track of eagles and photographing them, got a picture of an immature bald eagle in a tree being mobbed by crows at the edge of Otter Pond in Sag Harbor. On the next day, Ellen Stahl and her husband, Brian Boyhan, saw those two bald eagles on Long Pond, and then there was the one last Sunday.

What does this resurgence in local eagles mean? Well, eagles feed chiefly on fish, but also on carrion, as vultures do. They also take other birds and mammals, including baby deer. They are notorious for stealing food from other animals, especially from birds such as ospreys with fish in their talons. Between the eagles and the soon-to-be coywolves, wolf-coyote hybrids that are on the rise in the eastern United States, we may get back to deer population that is normal for Long Island without resorting to running down and de-ovarying does or selectively shooting does and fawns.

And should you be carrying one of those cute little fuzzy pooches that the femme fatales like to clutch to their bosom, don’t put it down unless you’re safely indoors.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have called it a "world house," according to the Rev. Walter Silva Thompson, the pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in East Hampton, where a diverse cross section of about 60 people from Southampton to Montauk came together on Monday to honor Dr. King's legacy.

The world house is a "multicultural, multi-ethnic gathering where everyone was included in understanding the concept of uniting together to make a difference in the world," Mr. Thompson said following Monday's celebration. "By bringing everyone together, we raise the consciousness of a whole nation, a whole group of people -- black, white, Asian, Hispanic, all people -- because evil and injustice and racism affect all of us."

Calvary Baptist Church honors Dr. King each year on the holiday, which is the only federal holiday designated for a leader who was not a U.S. president, according to the website nationalservice.gov, which calls for people to engage in community service activities on to honor his birthday. Lucius Ware, the president of the Eastern Long Island branch of the N.A.A.C.P., who attended Monday's ceremony, said Dr. King's supporters experienced quite a struggle working to have a day named in his honor.

"It commemorates the experience of the civil rights era and the leadership that Dr. King gave, and how his leadership has continued down through the years," Mr. Ware said. He attended multiple gatherings in King's honor between Sunday afternoon and Monday evening, including others in Riverhead, Cutchogue, Bridgehampton, and Quogue. "It's very significant for me, personally, because I know the need for all of this, especially for the youth," Mr. Ware said.

At Calvary Baptist Church's celebration, members of its youth group read from the Old Testament and the New Testament. There was music and a praise dance to the song "Glory" by John Legend and Common. The Rev. Dr. Connie Jones offered a prayer, donations were collected to support the church's M.L.K. Scholarship Program, and the combined choir led the group in song.

Inspired by Dr. King's teachings, Mr. Thompson offered a keynote address that focused on the idea of a city as both a seductive force and an intimidating place from which one should escape. He cast East Hampton as such a city, albeit a smaller one, with its own issues that need to be addressed. He called upon citizens to neither escape from nor be seduced by the city, but instead work together to confront the problems and issues that exist within a city in order to transform it into a better place for all.

"We cannot and must not take a neutral stand on the issues of crime and drugs and violence in our city," he said.

The gathering was attended by several community leaders, including East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, former Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst, and Robert Tymann, an assistant superintendent in the East Hampton School District.

"It's nice to come together as the human family," Mayor Rickenbach said. "We should heed well Dr. King's message and try to live it 365 days a year."

Supervisor Cantwell said it is evident that "we have a great deal more work to do. . . . The words of Rev. Thompson here today, about doing this together as a city, as a town, is the path forward," he said.

Kim Jones of Southampton said she felt inspired by the gathering. "Hearing Reverend Thompson talk kind of sparked the energy of wanting to do something in the community."

Louis Myrick of Bridgehampton said he believed society is now in a place similar to where it was 50 to 60 years ago.

"What we're charged with today is will we uphold the message of Dr. King? Will we heed the call to action, or will we be complacent?" he said. "The conversation we have about these issues . . . we should have in the town halls."

Update, Jan. 21, 2:42 p.m.:  Sean Ludwick, the New York real estate developer accused of vehicular homicide in the death of a Noyac man last summer, was taken into custody Tuesday night by Southampton Town police officers at his Brick Kiln Road residence in Bridgehampton and remanded to the county jail.

According to Robert Clifford, spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota, State Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho issued a search warrant for Mr. Ludwick last week after receiving information that he "had been making inquiries to buy a vessel outfitted with the navigational equipment necessary to travel to South America." He was arranging to take sailing lessons as well, Mr. Clifford said.

United States marshals began searching for him on Friday in Puerto Rico, where he was known to be vacationing. The island, an American territory, does not require a passport from U.S. citizens; Mr. Ludwick was ordered to surrender his passport after his arrest in August.

Mr. Clifford said the developer has likely forfeited the $1 million dollar bond on which he had been free.

After a night of drinking on Aug. 30, Mr. Ludwick crashed his 2013 Porsche on a dark Noyac road. Prosecutors charge that he then dragged the body of his passenger, Paul Hansen, out of the car and left it by the roadside. The D.A.'s office has not excluded the possibility that Mr. Hansen was alive at the time.

Benjamin Brafman, Mr. Ludwick's lawyer, declined comment on the arrest.

Originally, Jan. 20: Sean Ludwick, the New York real estate developer accused of vehicular homicide in the death of a Noyac man last summer, was taken into custody this week by United States marshals on a Caribbean island, reportedly Puerto Rico.

He was reportedly trying to buy a large boat in which to flee the country.

Mr. Ludwick was brought back to Suffolk County Tuesday and sent to jail. Robert Clifford, a spokesman for District Attorney Thomas Spota, said he has likely forfeited the $1 million dollar bond on which he had been free.

After a night of drinking on Aug. 30, Mr. Ludwick crashed his 2013 Porsche on a dark Noyac road. Prosecutors charge that he then dragged the body of his passenger, Paul Hansen, out of the car and left it by the roadside. The D.A.'s office has not excluded the possibility that Mr. Hansen was alive at the time.

Benjamin Brafman, Mr. Ludwick's lawyer, declined to comment yesterday on the arrest.

William Becker of Manor Lane, Springs, was the first to call the police, shortly after 11 a.m. on Nov. 18. He was at work at Becker’s Home Service, his hardware store in Montauk, at the time.

Just a day before, in Sag Harbor, Mr. Becker had spent $200 for a home security system called Ring Video Doorbell. He was getting ready to retire, which he has since done, turning the popular store over to his partners.

When the system is installed, it calls the homeowner’s cellphone any time the front doorbell is rung. The homeowner can not only hear and see who is outside but can talk to them as well, through a speaker. Visitors have no way of knowing that the voice they hear is coming over a phone, not from someone in the house.

Mr. Becker tried to install the system when he got home, he said this week, but had trouble mounting it outside the door. “Let me wait until tomorrow,” he thought, and secured it in place with a zip tie. Though it was jerry-rigged, it was active.

Eighteen hours later, his cellphone rang. When he answered it, he saw a woman, who had rung the doorbell, entering his house. He ran the video back and saw her peering into a window, looking back and forth. “She opens up my storm door,” Mr. Becker said. She is then seen turning the handle of the unlocked front door, looking inside for a moment, and going in, closing the door behind her.

Once inside, she is heard turning on either a television or a radio.

Grabbing another phone, Mr. Becker called his house’s landline. The call went into his answering machine. “I can see you,” he shouted, cursing, “You better get out of there.”

The woman, who was wearing a down vest over a blue jacket and blue winter gloves with New York Giants logos, is then seen hurrying out the front door, a hood now pulled up over her head. Once outside, unaware of the nearby surveillance camera, she pulls the hood down — her hair is in a bun — and calmly walks away from the house to a bicycle, which is lying near the street. She is last seen pedaling away down Manor Lane.

There was a mystery about the intruder that perplexed Mr. Becker, and police as well. “She had to walk right by the dining room table,” he said, where there was an open box with cash in it, from a small fresh-egg sideline that he runs. “My son started it. Then he moved to Rochester.” Since then, Mr. Becker has been putting $15 or $20 egg money into the box every day. “She had to see it,” he said.

About half an hour before the woman rang his bell, police later learned, she had allegedly entered another Springs residence. In that case, a neighbor, Elheme Kastrati, confronted the stranger she saw going door to door, then going into a house at 28 7th Street. That house has a surveillance system in place as well, and the homeowner, Lisa Eggert, called police a week later.

On Jan. 13, police sent out a photo of the unknown woman, taken from Mr. Becker’s video. Within an hour, Detective Sgt. Greg Schaeffer said last Thursday, they received a tip that Emma K. Bernier was the one they were looking for.

Detectives went to speak with Ms. Bernier, and she agreed to go to police headquarters, where she reportedly told them that “I only went into a couple of houses, looking for pills.” Once inside, she apparently headed straight for the bathroom medicine cabinets.

Based in part on that admission, she was charged with two felony counts of burglary.

She was arraigned the next day before East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky. Rudy Migliore, Jr., an assistant district attorney, told the court his office was asking that bail be set at $5,000.

“I do question the voluntariness of the statement she made to police,” said her Legal Aid Society lawyer, Brian Francese, adding that Ms. Bernier, 34, is a lifelong resident of East Hampton. He asked for bail of $500.

“This is not the first time this young defendant has been before the court,” Justice Tekulsky said, citing a misdemeanor conviction for driving while intoxicated and another, at the violation level, for driving with ability impaired, as well as several arrests on vehicular-law issues. He set bail at the amount requested by the D.A.’s office. It was posted later that day.

According to Detective Schaeffer, Ms. Bernier’s targets were random, chosen only for an unlocked front door. She is due back in court on Feb. 4.

Stuart Vorpahl Jr., a fisherman, historian, former town trustee, secretary of the East Hampton Baymen’s Association, and a descendant of one of East Hampton’s oldest families, died last Thursday at Southampton Hospital. He was 76 and had been undergoing treatment for cancer.

Mr. Vorpahl “was a fierce defender of the rights and traditions of the common people of our town,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell wrote on Facebook last Thursday. “He could spin a tale and recite history at will with a good sense of humor while making his point.”

“When he passed away today,” Mr. Cantwell wrote, “we lost one of the most important advocates for fishermen and local residents.”

Daniel Rodgers, an attorney and advocate for East End commercial fishermen, called Mr. Vorpahl “a man of the ages that we will never see again. He was very easy to underestimate, but he was absolutely brilliant, one of the smartest men I ever met.”

Three times, the bayman was charged with violating state fishing laws, and three times the charges were dismissed. In August 1998, Mr. Vorpahl was charged with one count each of fishing without a commercial license and taking lobsters without a permit after returning to the town commercial dock on Three Mile Harbor. He had 490 pounds of fluke on board at the time, when the daily limit was 70 pounds.

“I abide by the trustees’ permits,” Mr. Vorpahl told The New York Times. “The federal and state licenses are out of the loop.” Mr. Vorpahl maintained that the 1686 Dongan Patent, which established the trusteeor hindrance” by the Department of Environmental Conservation or any other entity. In September, he finally received a $1,000 check from the D.E.C. in restitution for the 1998 seizure.

“Stuart Vorpahl was not born to be a raconteur. He was born first and foremost a man of the sea, a fisherman. It was only through this frustration at bureaucracy and government regulation that he began challenging authority, and he never stopped. He never gave up; he never wavered. You have to admire that about a man. . . . He did this because it was the right thing to do. And he did it for all of us,” Mr. Rodgers said.

Arnold Leo, secretary of the Baymen’s Association, said that Mr. Vorpahl’s “impact really was a profound reminder of the origins of this settlement we call East Hampton Town. Indeed, it really was a fishing and farming village, even as recently as 50 years ago. Stuart was one of several baymen who recognized that some of the changes that had begun to happen were really very dangerous to their traditional, communal way of life.” 

“He was railing at the D.E.C. for years that he did not need a fishing license because of the Dongan Patent,” Hugh King, East Hampton’s town crier and the director of the Home, Sweet Home museum, said. “It was never brought to trial,” a fact that annoyed Mr. Vorpahl given his meticulous preparation for his defense and expectation that his arguments would prevail.

Mr. King called Mr. Vorpahl the embodiment of Samuel (Fishhooks) Mulford, an East Hampton merchant who went to London in 1704 to protest the tax on whale oil. “His opinions came from his knowledge of the trustees and the deep-seated feeling for the little man,” Mr. King said. “Who speaks up for the lone fisherman?”

Stuart Bennett Vorpahl Jr. was born on Dec. 2, 1939, in Southampton to Stuart Vorpahl and the former Helen Bengtson. The Bennett family, from whom he was descended, were among the first settlers here. He grew up on Oak Lane in Amagansett, where his father established Stuart’s as a commercial and retail fish market, and, for a time, on Montauk Highway in East Hampton. He graduated from East Hampton High School in 1957 and joined the Coast Guard shortly thereafter. He served four years on lightship duty, leaving in the early 1960s when his father, also a bayman, began suffering heart problems.

At a dinner-dance held by Southampton Town baymen, he met Mary Cituk, a Southampton native whom he would soon call “my bride,” an affectionate term he used for the rest of his life. “His mother and father knew my mother and father,” Mrs. Vorpahl said yesterday.

The marriage may not have happened at all, however, she said. “He had a passport to go to Sweden to marry a girl there,” someone he had met in Boston when he was in the Coast Guard. “She had gone back to Sweden and he was going to follow, but after that dance he didn’t go too far. He said his parents had it all planned — they didn’t want him to leave.” The couple were married on Dec. 2, 1962, the groom’s 23rd birthday.

Mr. Vorpahl was a certified welder and built several boats, but his passion was fishing. In addition to his tenure as a town trustee and membership in the Baymen’s Association, he was also a member of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, the East Hampton Town Dory Rescue Squad, and its conservation advisory council.

Mr. Vorpahl’s understanding of conservation came from experience, and he made his views known as regulation of commercial finfish harvests increased. In 1985, striped bass were banned from the marketplace after bass spawned in the Hudson River were found to contain dangerous levels of polychlorinated biphenyls. Five years later, the haulseine, a semi-circle of net cast from a dory, was banned.

“To the average sportfisherman,” Mr.

Vorpahl wrote to The East Hampton Star in 1988, “the definition of fisheries conservation is to kill off the commercial fishermen. . . . If conservation means controlling the harvest, New York State has been regulating the wrong group of people for years.”

“The town’s patents are our safeguard,” Mr. Vorpahl wrote to The Star five years later, “as they guarantee our rights to ‘fish, hunt, hawk, and fowl’. . . . Historical documents are not to be trifled with, and no judge has the legal authority to rewrite or ignore the existence of our town’s history.”

Even during his illness, Mr. Vorpahl continued to fight for the rights of residents and East Hampton traditions, often in person at meetings of the town board and trustees. On Sept. 22 he attended a trustees meeting for what would be the last time. After a discussion of lease terms for residents of trustee-owned land at Lazy Point in Amagansett, he was typically direct.

“I sat here listening to an awful lot of fuss and feathers,” he said. “What in God’s name is going on now?” He returned to the lectern later in the evening, when discussion had turned to the dense blue-green algae bloom at Georgica Pond in East Hampton, blamed in part on excessive use of lawn fertilizer and aging septic systems. Property owners were appealing to the trustees to open the pond to the Atlantic Ocean ahead of, and in addition to, their historic twice-yearly schedule.

 “Stick to the original schedules,” Mr. Vorpahl told the trustees, “which were always tied to the migration of fish. All those people who live there have ratted it up. . . . The devil is here,” he warned, “and he has arrived in gangbuster style. But do not open up Georgica Pond because of this situation. Let the people up there suffer, and suffer hard, and they will get together. . . . It’s time to pay the piper.”

He was not finished. “New York municipal law does not apply whatsoever,” was his final message to the ancient governing body. “Courts and judges are very powerful, but there is one thing they cannot do: that is rewrite hitory, yet they’re doing it. For now, they seem to be getting away with it.”

The Rev. Steven Howarth of the Amagansett Presbyterian Church, who conducted a funeral service for Mr. Vorpahl on Tuesday, said on Friday that he had  been an active and stalwart member of the congregation. He “would play a role in the church not unlike his role in the community: pay attention to changes. . . . He wouldn’t want us to let go of the old unless the new was going to add something. He was also just a warm, welcoming fellow. New members and visitors to the church often found themselves in conversation with him at our coffee hour after worship. His gift for engaging other folks is something we’re going to miss.”

Diane McNally, a trustee who until this month was the body’s longtime clerk, called Mr. Vorpahl “so wise and so steadfast in his opinions and thoughts on what the trustees represent.” He taught her a lot, she said. “I knew that if I had him supporting whatever I was doing on behalf of the trustees, I was going in the right direction.”

Along with his wife, Mr. Vorpahl’s two daughters survive. They are Christine Vorpahl of Bridgehampton and Susan Vorpahl of East Hampton. Five grandchildren, one great-grandchild, and nine nieces and nephews also survive, as do three sisters, Judith Bennett of Amagansett, Vivian Edwards of Sebastian, Fla., and Eleanor Miller of East Hampton. Mr. Vorpahl’s brothers, William Vorpahl Sr. and Gordon Vorpahl, died before him.

The family welcomed visitors on Sunday and Monday at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. A reception at the Amagansett Firehouse followed the funeral service on Tuesday.

Mr. Vorpahl was cremated. The family has suggested memorial contributions to the Amagansett Presbyterian Church’s Scoville Hall rebuilding fund, P.O. Box 764, Amagansett 11930 or scovillehall.org, the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, 1 Cedar Street, East Hampton 11937, or the Amagansett Fire Department, P.O. Box 911, Amagansett.