The use of utility poles coated with pentachlorophenol, such as those recently installed by PSEG Long Island in East Hampton and Amagansett for a controversial six-mile high-voltage transmission line, would be banned in New York State under legislation proposed this week by State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. The industrial wood preservative has been banned in countries worldwide.

The draft law also calls for warnings to be posted on existing poles treated with the chemical, called penta — a step that a local activist group, Long Island Businesses for Responsible Energy, which has sued PSEG over its transmission line here, called for recently in visits to the East Hampton Town and Village Boards.

Representatives of the group, called LIBFRE, also reported to the boards on the results of recent water tests at the East Hampton Village Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street. The new utility poles have been installed along Cedar Street, and penta was detected in recent tests of water from the building. The water was drawn at the village’s request from a sump in the basement of the building, a source not used for drinking water and not considered potable, Rebecca Molinaro, the village administrator, said this week.

Village officials are reviewing a request by LIBFRE to conduct additional water tests by drilling down into groundwater, she said.

In a joint press release with Mr. LaValle, Mr. Thiele said that “at a time when we are all focused on the degradation of our water, it is inconceivable that wood treated with this substance would be permitted to leach into the groundwater on Long Island. There are better options and those options should be implemented now.”

The release provided federal Environmental Protection Agency information regarding pentachlorophenol, or PCP, and its toxicity. It has been classified by the agency as a “probable human carcinogen.”

The chemical has been outlawed for use by the general public, Mr. Thiele said, yet “has been used to treat utility poles for transmission lines in places like East Hampton that are only a few feet from residential dwellings, exposing children and families to this dangerous substance.”

“This is a critical public health and safety matter,” Mr. LaValle said in the release.

A Springs man was arrested at about 8:40 a.m. on Monday after running his 2000 Dodge pickup down Church Street and through a stop sign at Gingerbread Lane, where it jumped a curb outside the East Hampton branch of Bridgehampton National Bank, mowed down some shrubs, and drove off. East Hampton Village police said black tire tracks extended 20 yards away down Church Street. Children had been arriving for the start of classes at the John M. Marshall Elementary School on Gingerbread Lane nearby as the incident happened, police said. It occurred minutes before the official drop-off time.

Christopher S. Verity, 21, had fallen asleep at the wheel, one of the passengers in his truck later told police. “He was out like a light,” the person said, and leaning sideways. When his passengers began screaming, Mr. Verity came to, gunned the engine, and drove into the long-term parking lot by the school before jumping out and fleeing. There were several witnesses in addition to the passengers, as the bank’s staff were getting set to open.

A village detective caught up with Mr. Verity on Newtown Lane after a pursuit. He initially ignored an order to stop and fall to the ground, but then obeyed. As he was about to be handcuffed, however, he resisted, leading to a physical confrontation. The detective subdued him using “joint-locking technique,” according to a report.

Charged with driving while intoxicated and resisting arrest, he was taken back to village headquarters on Cedar Street to spend the next 24 hours awaiting a Tuesday-morning arraignment in East Hampton Town Justice Court. Mr. Verity, who now lives in Sag Harbor but has longtime roots in the Springs community, was released without bail but with a future date in court.

East Hampton Town police arrested three men during the week just past on the same charge. Emiro Saavedra of Montauk, 61, was pulled over a little past midnight last Thursday on West Lake Drive there; police said he had been speeding. He reportedly failed field sobriety tests and was taken back to headquarters in Wainscott, where his blood-alcohol level was said to be .19 of 1 percent, high enough to raise the D.W.I. charge to the aggravated level.

Mr. Saavedra has three drunken-driving convictions on his record already, two of them felonies, though all three happened more than 10 years ago. Otherwise, this charge would have been yet another felony. Further, he narrowly missed being charged under Vince’s Law, which was signed by Governor Cuomo on Aug. 1 and takes effect on Nov. 1. Named for an 81-year-old man killed on his way to church by a drunken driver who was awaiting sentencing on his fifth D.W.I. conviction, Vince’s Law states that after two D.W.I. conviction in 15 years the charge becomes a Class D felony, with a possible prison sentence of seven years. It appeared to Justice Steven Tekulsky, during Mr. Saavedra’s arraignment Friday morning, that the brand-new law would have applied to him.

Justice Tekulsky set bail for him at $8,000, which has not been met. Mr. Saavedra is being held at the county jail in Riverside, awaiting his next court appearance in East Hampton.

The second man arrested, also from Montauk, was Joseph V. Belsito Jr., 54, who was stopped downtown in that hamlet early Sunday morning; police said he was driving without headlights. His breath test reportedly produced a reading of .15.

Mr. Belsito case has two prior D.W.I. convictions, one here in 2003 and the other following a 2006 arrest in Florida. In 2006, however, New York State classified out-of-state D.W.I. convictions as D.W.A.I., driving with ability impaired by alcohol, which is a violation, no more. Since then, the laws have been toughened, and out-of-state convictions are now viewed at the equivalent level in New York.

The timing was in the defendant’s favor, Justice Tekulsky observed. “You’re fortunate this is not a felony charge,” he said. He released the defendant without bail, noting his ties in the community.

The third defendant, an 18-year-old, was arrested early Saturday morning on Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton. It was the first such arrest for the youth, whose name was withheld, apparently because he is eligible for youthful offender status.

Under youthful offender status (ages 16 through 18), a first conviction is vacated and the defendant has no criminal record; he would be sentenced under special guidelines. Justice Tekulsky set bail for the young man at $250.

Sag Harbor Village police were called to a Redwood Road residence Monday night on a report of a domestic dispute and ended up arresting Naseen Malak, 42, on charges of drunken driving and criminal mischief. Mr. Malak was outside the residence, which he shares with his girlfriend, who had locked him out. When she refused to open the door he went to the rear of the house, police said, and “intentionally broke the rear bedroom window attempting to talk” to her. The woman told police “she did not want to have any contact with Mr. Malak if he had been drinking.”

Police saw the man drive away from the house and stopped his 2000 Subaru on Garden Street, where he allegedly failed roadside sobriety tests. Back at headquarters his blood-alcohol level was reportedly over .18, making the charge aggravated D.W.I. The criminal mischief charge was leveled in connection with the broken window. Mr. Malak was released in the morning and given a date to return to court.

Finally, New York State troopers arrested Jonathan J. Majico, 23, of East Hampton on Sunday morning and charged him with felony D.W.I. as well as criminal impersonation. He was stopped on Sandy Hollow Road in Southampton, reportedly for making an unsafe lane change.

Three East Hampton men were rescued from Gardiner’s Bay Monday night after a search that began with a 911 call for help when their rowboat began taking on water.

The men had rowed out into the bay to fish for porgies, according to Ed Michels, the East Hampton Town’s chief harbormaster. They had no engine and lost an oar.

As the weather deteriorated, the boat was in a precarious position. When they were unable to make it back to shore, one of the men phoned his wife.

The woman called 911 at 7:46 p.m., but the only location she could provide dispatchers was that the men were “somewhere off Springs-Fireplace Road,” police Capt. Chris Anderson said. At 8:35 p.m., with a search beginning in the bay, according to Captain Anderson, air and water temperatures were in the upper 60s, there were four to five-foot choppy seas, and 20 to 25-mile-per-hour winds.

Working off the assumption the men were off Gerard Drive, a Marine Patrol boat went out to search, asking for Coast Guard Station Montauk to assist. “A language barrier inhibited our ability to zero in on a good location,” Captain Anderson said.

“The biggest problem we had was finding them,” Chief Michels said. Cellphone GPS tracking placed the boaters at several different places, including Montauk, Maidstone, and Gerard Drive. Rescuers shot off flares and used spotlights. A Suffolk County helicopter was also requested.

Before a formal search pattern was employed, Chief Michels said the Marine Patrol crew spotted the small boat on a wave crest in the bay between Fresh Pond and Gerard Drive.

The men — Freddy Coyago-Valladolio, 31, Jose Zeldon, 37, and Fredi Sanchez-Teneasca, 42 — were soaking wet, but still in the boat. They had no life vests or other survival gear. “They just had some fishing poles and the one oar,” Chief Michels said.

About an hour and half into the search, at 9:15, they were brought aboard the Marine Patrol boat. They came ashore at the Devon Yacht Club. An Amagansett Fire Department ambulance was called to treat the men for cold exposure at 9:25 p.m.

The men refused to be taken to the hospital and were released, Captain Anderson said, adding that they had been very lucky.

“I think the idea was to row out and do some fishing and come back. With 30-mile-per-hour winds, it doesn’t happen like that,” Chief Michels said.

“If we didn’t find them I don’t know if they would have made it through the night,” he said.

With the bay scallop season approaching and predictions of healthy harvests in Napeague and Three Mile Harbors, Nat Miller, an East Hampton Town Trustee and 13th-generation bayman, warned his fellow trustees at a meeting on Tuesday that “half of it’s going to walk away through illegal practices.” Poaching was “spiraling out of control,” he said, because enforcement of regulations was insufficient.

The trustees have been well aware that the culprit or culprits who breached and uprooted an 8,000-square-foot scallop sanctuary in Napeague Harbor last fall, one of two shellfish sanctuaries in town waterways, were never identified.  The sanctuaries, created in 2009 in an effort to reseed waters with bug scallops after a die-off in the mid-1980s, are legally off limits to commercial and recreational fishing.

  Furthermore, much of the work of the East Hampton Shellfish Hatchery, where millions of clams, oysters, and scallops are spawned and transferred to town waterways each year, is being squandered, Mr. Miller said. “It’s tax dollars that are walking away.”

The taking of oysters measuring less than three inches is prohibited. But, Mr. Miller said, commercial and recreational harvesters were violating the law. Commercial fishermen are allowed five bushels of oysters a day, he said, “But a lot of people have the mindset, ‘If I don’t take these two-and-a-half-inch oysters, someone else is going to take them. If this person is going to take seven bushels of scallops, I have to take seven bushels, because this is what I do year-round.’ This attitude is getting worse and worse and worse. Either we do something, or we get rid of all the laws.”

Instead of getting rid of regulations, however, Mr. Miller said penalties for violations are far too low. The shellfish hatchery staff and enforcement officers do great work, he said, “but there’s not enough of them, and they’re spread too thin.” Sean McCaffrey, a trustee, added. The trustees considered both a request that the town board stiffen penalties and hire a bay constable, who would work independently of Marine Patrol, to police the waterways.

Ed Michels, chief of the town Marine Patrol, said yesterday that more personnel would help with enforcement, but defended his department’s efforts and said that while the bay constable has been phased out, harbormaster is a higher position in criminal procedure law and performs the same duties. “There is no shortage of marine enforcement by having harbormasters instead of bay constables,” he said.

In addition to code enforcement of matters pertaining to boating, beaches, nature preserves, and parklands, the department has performed over 1,000 checks relating to shellfish and fin fish this year, resulting in 33 summonses issued for taking shellfish without a permit, in uncertified waters, or out of season, he said.

“I think we’d all like to have morepeople,” Mr. Michels said of government departments, “but these guys are working, and we’re getting the best we can get, I believe.”

“We have to make the other entities within the town that we work with aware of just how important this is,” Diane McNally, the presiding officer of the panel, said. “We’re just spinning our wheels unless we address it.” She suggested a meeting with Mr. Michels, Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, Chief Michael Sarlo of the Police Department, and John Jilnicki, a town attorney, at which the trustees would make recommendations about penalties and greater enforcement.

“You’re going to have to make an example of someone,” Mr. Miller said. “Put the word out. Put some boats in the water.”

In other action, the trustees voted to extend the closure of Georgica Pond to all shellfishing, including crabbing, for another 21 days. Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, was first detected in Georgica Pond in July. The restriction can be lifted if water sampling determines that the algal bloom has dissipated.

Stephanie Forsberg, the trustees’ assistant clerk, advised her colleagues that Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University, who is testing water quality in conjunction with the trustees, would like to conduct tests both before and after they open the pond to the Atlantic, which is traditionally on or around Oct. 15. Her colleagues agreed.

The People’s Climate March, a mass gathering in New York City Sunday aimed at compelling governments and the United Nations to take dramatic action to address climate change, drew more than 300,000 demonstrators, including some from East Hampton.

The march was attended by such noteworthy figures as former Vice President Al Gore, who has long sounded the alarm about climate change and scientists’ increasingly dire warnings about its potentially devastating impact on civilization, and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who recently announced a plan to increase energy-efficiency standards of all public buildings and reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

The march preceded a climate summit meeting at the United Nations on Tuesday. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, who presided over that meeting, also attended the march, which was one of more than 2,400 coinciding demonstrations in 150 countries.

Among those drawn from East Hampton were representatives from the East End Climate Action Network and Renewable Energy Long Island, a not-for-profit organization promoting clean, sustainable energy use and generation.

“There was definitely a lot of East Hampton people there,” said Scott Bluedorn, an artist and member of the East End Climate Action Network who attended the march. “It was really overwhelming to see that many people with that one message.”

Gordian Raacke, Renewable Energy Long Island’s executive director, agreed. “It was awesome,” he said. “It really showed that people care about our future and our calling for action. It was really encouraging to be amongst 300,000 or more friends that all fight for the same thing that we have been fighting for. And to have the U.N. secretary general marching with the people was really reassuring.”

Mr. Raacke marched with signs touting East Hampton Town’s goal, announced in May, to meet 100 percent of its electricity needs with renewable energy sources by 2020.

The message, he said, attracted the attention of many marchers who vacation or have friends on the South Fork. “We can serve as an example to other towns, and people around the Island andthis problem and we can solve it by switching to 100-percent renewable energy sources,” he said. “This is really catching on and East Hampton is at the forefront of it. It makes me really proud of this town.”

Don Matheson, a member of the East End Climate Action Network and the Long Island chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, was similarly cheered by what he saw at the march. “As a 66-year-old man I was very gratified to see that a large, large number of the people were young,” he said. He observed “huge shipments of college-age people from all around,” he said, “and that bodes well for things changing.”

Mr. Bluedorn, who is 28, estimated that a large majority of the marchers were indeed young adults, but participants also included indigenous people from around the world. “That was pretty moving,” he said.

Citizens Climate Lobby advocates for a program in which a tax would be levied on fossil-fuel energy sources with all proceeds directed to United States taxpayers. Prior to Sunday’s march, James Hansen, a noted climate scientist, professor at Columbia University, and former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, announced that he was going to march with that group, Mr. Matheson said. “He felt C.C.L. had the best first solution that should be implemented right away,” he said. “It’s a program that would both initiate a large reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and help the economy. There’s no economic reason not to do it.”

Mr. Raacke applauded the positive messaging that characterized the march, rather than dire predictions and a feeling of hopelessness over government inaction. His posters depicting the goals set in East Hampton were indicative of the mood, he said. “Leading with a solution is really much more empowering than pointing out the problem. Offering people a way out of this crisis is what’s needed, and that’s what we’re doing here in East Hampton.”

The Climate Action Network, said Mr. Bluedorn, should “build on this momentum.” The march, he said, brought to him the realization that climate change “is such a massive thing that you can’t do it alone. Everyone needs to participate in some way. I want to encourage people to always think about what they can do personally, what they can change, to move this mountain, which is climate change.”

“I’m hoping that this signals a new era,” Mr. Matheson said of the march. “I’m going to do everything I can to see that that happens.”

Since resigning from the East Hampton School Board in early July, Patricia Hope has not exactly had trouble filling her days.

In recent weeks, the former science teacher, who chaired the East Hampton High School science department for eight years before retiring in 2007, has turned her attention toward the cataloging of local ticks and mites.

“I’ve always been interested in the ecosystem that I live in,” said Ms. Hope, who has taken up a study of her surroundings, focusing on the immediate habitat that borders her property in Northwest Woods. “I’m an amateur naturalist.”

Prior to resigning from the school board, Ms. Hope had served for the past year as its outspoken president. J.P. Foster now holds the position. Looking at the year ahead, Ms. Hope said the current configuration of the board was such that she felt she would be doing “more harm than good” by continuing to serve. “The last thing I would want to do is hurt my district,” she said, declining to go into further detail.

Since Ms. Hope stepped down in July, the board has wavered on how to proceed, recently deciding to appoint a seventh member to serve until next May’s election. At a meeting earlier this month, the board specified a preference for a member with a finance background, leading some to speculate as to whether they had already selected someone to fill the vacancy. Applications are due to the district office no later than Oct. 1, with the board hoping to make a decision by Nov. 1.

Still, the past two months have not been easy ones for Ms. Hope, a stickler for detail, who said she dedicated more than 40 hours each week to the unpaid board position.

Over a late breakfast at Provisions in Sag Harbor on Monday, she likened the transition to a speeding train coming to a sudden and abrupt halt. “You put the brakes on the train, but it takes time to slow down, especially when it has a lot of momentum behind it,” she said. “I knew going in that it would take time. But I’ve finally come out the other side. I’m back,” she said with a smile, acknowledging that her trademark joyousness and ease of laughter had finally returned.

Equipped now with the luxury of more free time and a self-described “scientific mindset,” Ms. Hope, 72, is turning her energy and passion to a project that has long intrigued her — the study and classification of local creepy crawlies.

In the summer of 2011, after walking around the edges of Northwest Creek, Ms. Hope returned home with patches of red, itchy welts circling her ankles and wrists. The bites, and subsequent rash, differed significantly from previous tick bites.

In recent years, debate has raged whether there are actually any chiggers on the East End, with adherents falling squarely on both sides. While some are adamant that the distinct bites are the result of chiggers, a type of mite, others say they are from nymph or larval dog, deer, or lone star ticks. Partly complicating matters, each varies in size and shape, depending on their life stages (larva, nymph, and adult) and gender.

“The preferred method would be to check the organism’s DNA,” said Ms. Hope, who plans to send a recently collected specimen, which she believes to be a six-legged juvenile chigger, for additional testing.

She brought three white binders to Provisions, each filled to the brim with her recent findings and research.

The project began while taking twice-daily walks with her dog, Carly, a 4-year-old yellow Lab, near the preserve that surrounds her property in East Hampton. Though she keeps Carly on a leash, never allowing her to roam free, she noticed an increasing number of ticks when examining her afterward. In April of last year, partly on a whim, she decided to start keeping track.

Ms. Hope narrowed her area of focus, limiting her collection to six and eight-legged critters residing within the walls of her home, including those found on her person or on her dog. The porch and deck were off limits.

Page after laminated page contain her findings, with each tick affixed to an index card with a piece of Scotch tape — including the date it was collected and the location where it was found. Many are dog and white-dotted lone star ticks. But starting in August of 2013, she collected hundreds of engorged black-legged nymphs that resemble sesame seeds.

From April 12 until Nov. 19 of last year, she amassed 2,458 ticks, catching the first one of 2014 in January.

Now, she has turned her attention to chiggers.

“I believe that we have chiggers here. I want to prove it,” said Ms. Hope, drawing the attention of Provisions patrons as she flipped through the tick-infested pages, eager to add their opinions to the conversation. One employee even offered up access to her backyard. “That’s my goal.”

As temperatures start to cool, Ms. Hope plans to continue gathering evidence until the first frost. She has converted part of her living room, where school board paraphernalia had previously taken up valuable real estate, into a working laboratory.

“I’m literally looking in my own backyard,” she said, with a gleam in her eye. Now, as a precaution, Ms. Hope has taken to wearing a beekeeper’s suit and rubber boots when out on her daily walks. “The ticks are my neighbors. God knows there are more than enough of them to keep me busy.”

The owners of the former East Deck Motel in Montauk, who had proposed a private club there, asked on Friday to postpone a scheduled appearance before the East Hampton Town Planning Board last night to give the town the chance to negotiate a possible purchase of the property.

“We agree Ditch Plains is a special place and have requested an adjournment,” Lars Svanberg and Scott Bradley, members of the ownership group, known as ED40, said in a press release Friday from Rubenstein Public Relations.

According to Jodi Walker, the planning board’s secretary, the board received a formal letter on Friday from Richard A. Hammer, ED40’s attorney, seeking the delay. Reed Jones, the board’s chairman, quickly granted his request.

The proposal, which called for a two-story building, a restaurant, an Olympic-size pool, and below-grade parking, among other amenities, drew fervent opposition in Montauk, including a petition urging the planning board to require a detailed environmental impact study and a paddle-out over Labor Day weekend during which nearly 200 surfers took to the ocean off Ditch Plain Beach in protest.

In his letter, Mr. Hammer cited “significant public comments received” as a major factor in the decision to ask for the delay.

“The applicant has offered the property for public acquisition to the Town of East Hampton,” Mr. Hammer wrote. “We will, however, revise our plans and improve our presentation for future consideration by the planning board while this consideration by the town board proceeds, and will be in touch with you for future consideration when we are ready for further consideration by the planning board on any revised plans,” the letter said.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said Friday that the exploratory process needed before any purchase could be made is already under way. Such a purchase would likely be done with money from the town’s preservation fund. Mr. Cantwell said that Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition, was aware of the town’s interest.

Mr. Cantwell laid out the steps involved in the process. First, he said, Mr. Wilson would need to gauge the level of interest of the town’s community preservation fund committee. An appraisal of the property would be needed in order to determine its value and a purchase price would have to be negotiated based on that appraisal. Mr. Cantwell said that it can take “weeks, and even months,” before a final decision is made.

The current owners purchased the property, which is in a resort zone, in 2013 for over $15 million. It had been on the market for some time before that.

Mr. Cantwell pointed out that the town owns beachfront land both east and west of the property.

Mr. Cantwell compared the ED40 proposal to the 555 plan in Amagansett, where the owners had proposed a market-rate senior citizen housing development on Montauk Highway farmland. The town purchased the land this spring for $10 million. Opposition to that plan grew over weeks and months of public meetings and planning board sessions. The opposition to the ED40 plan gathered steam quickly after the details of the application became public. By more than a week before the proposal was to be reviewed by the planning board, the online petition had gathered more than 5,000 signatures.

The overall message the opposition sent was clear, Mr. Cantwell said: “People care about Ditch Plains.”

When Jerry Sheehan, a former chief of the Springs Fire Department, ran to his neighbor’s house at 787 Accabonac Road in the dark early Saturday morning, flames were shooting 30 feet into the air through its roof. The fire seemed to be in one part of the house, but he knew all too well that the smoke inside would be deadly.

Facing the house, he didn’t notice at first that Judi Bistrian and her 11-year-old daughter, Violet, and 4-year-old son, Roman, were huddled near a detached garage. Ms. Bistrian said later that when she called out to him she could tell by the look on his face and the tone of his voice that he had thought the worst. “I’m sure his first thought was, ‘They’re gone.’ ”

She was right. “I figured they were still sleeping and the smoke got to them,” Mr. Sheehan said. He was prepared to go inside and search for them, he said, explaining that he knew the layout of the 100-year-old house because it once belonged to his mother. “Thank God, I didn’t have to,” he said. The entire house was engulfed in a matter of minutes.

Ms. Bistrian had rescued her children, two pets, and a bantam chicken moments earlier, “with seconds to spare before the windows started exploding,” she said. Several circumstances were in her favor. Her husband, Rob Bistrian, the captain of a commercial fishing boat, was out to sea for the third night, and when he is away she tends to sleep with her children in a queen-size bed on the first floor, instead of putting them to bed in their own rooms on the second floor. Their chocolate Lab has a tumor in his throat and suffers breathing problems, so she had taken him and their small dog into the bedroom and closed the door so he would breathe easier in air-conditioning.

Despite having a bad sense of smell, Ms. Bistrian awoke to feel her nostrils burning. Looking for the source, she said, “I walked into a wall of smoke in the kitchen. I thought I was having a puffback. There was black smoke coming from the mudroom.” She opened the door to the room, which investigators described as an enclosed porch, to see thick black smoke and hear a crackling sound. “That’s when I knew the house was on fire,” she said.

She then slammed the mudroom door shut, a move that Tom Baker, the East Hampton Town fire marshal, said bought her time. “That was the real life-saver,” he said Tuesday. “Had she not closed the door, it would have rapidly tore through the house.” 

Ms. Bistrian went into the bedroom and awakened her daughter, who grabbed Bella, a Jack Russell-Chihuahua mix that had been sleeping in the bed, and she grabbed her son. They went out a sliding glass door onto the deck. She then went back into the house to lead the old, 170-pound Lab, Zeke, outside. With the house phone no longer working, she went back inside, got her cellphone, and called 911. It was about 4:20 a.m.

After hanging up, she remembered that one of the bantams, which was being kept separate from those in the coop, was in the house, just a few steps from the sliding door. She said she went through “black, black smoke” to grab the rabbit cage it was in. “That’s when the windows started exploding. Flames were everywhere,” she said. A cat, named Sammy, which had recently been adopted, was killed in the fire.

“It’s quite a miracle we’re alive,” Ms. Bistrian said. “If we would have slept 10 seconds longer, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now.” She did not escape entirely unscathed, however. She and the children were taken to Southampton Hospital for possible smoke inhalation. The children were given some oxygen and quickly released, but she was admitted, treated with oxygen therapy, and  kept under observation until that afternoon.

Ms. Bistrian’s mother, Peggy Miller, also feared the worst after she learned of the fire — over the Springs Fire Department pager. She has been a volunteer for 10 years, and her husband, Chuck Miller, has been a member for more than 40. They drove to the house to see it engulfed. “She got out of the car and ran into the yard area and basically was screaming, ‘They are all dead,’ ” her daughter said. “She has laryngitis from screaming so much.”

David King, the Fire Department’s first assistant chief, said the fire took 30 to 40 minutes to fully extinguish, and that firefighters stayed at the scene for about two hours. About 75 firefighters had responded. Springs received assistance from the Amagansett, East Hampton, and Sag Harbor Fire Departments and the East Hampton Village Volunteer Ambulance Association helped assess firefighters’ conditions. An Amagansett volunteer was taken to Southampton Hospital as a precaution and was released by mid-morning.

Ms. Bistrian said she was stunned to learn during her hospital stay that the family’s two pet turtles survived in their tank on the second floor.

Allen Bennett, Amagansett’s first assistant chief, said P.J. Cantwell, an ex-fire chief, and Chris Beckert, an assistant captain, both with Amagansett, had discovered the aquatic turtles still alive with the bigger one, about 12-inches in diameter, on top of the smaller one, and they weren’t particularly pleasant when the firemen handled them. “They were hissing. They were mean,” Mr. Bennett said with a laugh. The firemen found a container and cooled them down with water.

With the house they lived in for 13 years destroyed, the Bistrians are staying at Ms. Bistrian’s mother’s house in Springs. “We lost every single thing we owned and we escaped in our pajamas and our bare feet,” she said. Her daughter is handling it well, but her son is taking it harder, she said. “He keeps asking, ‘When can we go home?’ ”

The children are in seventh grade and pre-kindergarten and are home-schooled. Ms. Bistrian is working with an East Hampton home-schooling group to replace their materials and books.

“I am not sad. I am not depressed. I am just thrilled to be alive and thrilled my children are alive and just in awe of my community,” Ms. Bistrian said.

The family has received countless donations of food, clothing, toys, books, and dog food. A fund-raiser will be held on Saturday at the Springs Firehouse from 4 to 7 p.m. Admission is $40.

Mr. Baker, in the fire marshal’s office, said yesterday that the fire began in the mudroom and was caused by wear on the dryer’s electrical cord. “We know it had been burning — we can’t pinpoint an exact time —  but quite a while,” he said. Though the machine was not turned on, it still draws electricity from the wall, and the cord was rubbing up against metal, which sparked the fire. A safeguard wasn’t in place, he said. “It was a simple mistake” made during installation in 2011, he said.

Meanwhile, out at sea, Mr. Bistrian had awakened in his bunk to a text message from Chris Parsons, from whom he and his wife had bought the house, asking if everyone was all right after the fire. He thought the message was a mistake. After trying to call home and finding the phone wasn’t working, he reached his mother-in-law and learned what had happened. Of his wife, he said, “I told her, she’s a hero. She saved everybody’s lives.” But Ms. Bistrian said she was uncomfortable being called hero.

“You act on instinct in a stressful situation like that,” she said. “I would hope and think that every single mother in the world would have done that. My mission was to get my babies out of there. I did what I had to do.”

A reported mulch fire burning at the Shelter Island Town dump Saturday night could be seen from Long Beach in Noyac and other areas around North Haven and Sag Harbor on the South Fork.

The Sag Harbor Fire Department responded with one engine and manpower, taking the South Ferry to stand by at Shelter Island's headquarters in case the Shelter Island Fire Department needed assistance. Sag Harbor firefighters were called at 7:55 p.m.

The fire on Shelter Island began around 7:20 p.m.

It was unclear if other departments from the North Fork were called to assist. 

Check back for more information as it becomes available.

A small electrical fire broke out in a house on Culloden Point in Montauk on Sunday evening. The Montauk Fire Department called for back up, but quickly extinguished the fire.

The fire was reported at 14 Beach Plum Road in Culloden Shores at 5:33 p.m. The Amagansett Rapid Intervention Team, a specially-trained group of firefighters who can rescue firefighters if necessary, were called to Montauk, but were not needed. 

It was not immediately clear how bad the damage was to the house. The East Hampton Town Fire Marshal's office is investigating the cause. 

Sunday evening proved to be a busy day on the South Fork. The Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps called for the medevac helicopter to transport a person who fell down stairs behind 36 Main Street in Sag Harbor Village on Sunday at about 6:15 p.m. The Sag Harbor Fire Department's rescue squad assisted E.M.S., and an engine stood by at Havens Beach for the medevac to land.