With Sandy now a memory, people have begun to clean up and assess damages. As the claims pour in to the region’s insurance brokers, local brokers are in agreement about two things -- the destruction caused by Sandy could have been far worse, but regardless, it will result in higher -- perhaps much higher -- premiums.

     Along with that bad news, however, comes some more positive news for homeowners from Governor Cuomo’s office, which announced on Wednesday that the State Department of Financial Services has “informed the insurance industry that hurricane deductibles should not be triggered” for the storm it did not have “sustained hurricane-force winds when it made land in New York.”

     "Many of the insurance companies have a deductible for all perils that they insure under the policy except for hurricanes," said George Yates, president of Dayton, Ritz and Osborne in East Hampton. "Hurricanes typically have a higher deductible, which ranges anywhere from 2 to 5 percent of whatever you're insuring the home for. If you have a $500,000 home, there may be a $25,000 hurricane deductible.” In other words, a homeowner could be responsible for the first $25,000 of repairs. “But that is only for hurricane wind," Mr. Yates said.      Flood damage, Mr. Yates said, is an excluded peril on all homeowners insurance policies, covered instead through the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Flood Insurance Program.

     By Thursday, three days after the hurricane-turned-post-tropical-storm roared across Long Island, many on the South Fork were still without electricity, but crews had already removed many fallen trees and the hamlets and villages of East Hampton Town, in contrast to western Long Island, Lower Manhattan, and the New Jersey coastline, were beginning to resemble their pre-Sandy selves.

     Reports of flooding, downed trees, and damage caused by wind -- such as trees falling on houses or cars or shingles ripped from roofs -- comprise the vast majority of calls to local insurance agencies.

     These reports, said Kim Vaughn of the B.D. Corwin Agency in Sag Harbor, where flooding was significant, are "pretty much in line" with expectations, or "probably less, because we're lucky the storm didn't hit us directly. It's similar to last year, [with] a little more flooding," she said, referring to Irene, which hit Long Island in late August 2011.

     A full assessment will be long in coming, however, given the inability of both brokers and clients to communicate with one another. With transportation an additional challenge, local insurance brokers anticipate a long wait for Sandy-related claims to be made and processed. Many second homeowners were still unaware of what, if any, damage their properties on the South Fork had sustained.

     “We've had some of them calling us asking if we could go check their house and report back to them, because they don't know and are very anxious about it,” Timothy Brenneman, managing director of Cook, Hall, and Hyde in East Hampton, said on Thursday afternoon. “We've done that on several occasions today already. My sense is, because of what's going on in the city as well, there will be a long tail on this, where it may be literally weeks before we're able to give a better assessment on the full extent of exactly what our clients have experienced."

     Mr. Brenneman said that by Thursday afternoon his firm had taken 175 claims. "Those are the claims that have come directly to us," he said. "We know some of our customers are going directly to the carriers as well. Because we don't have access to e-mail or fax, we are not getting those acknowledgements. We suspect that that may be another 50 percent, or more, that have gone direct to the insurance companies."

     The agency has approximately 10,000 clients on the East End of Long Island, said Leonard Scioscia, its president and chief executive officer. "We're looking at 3 percent of them having some claim activity, some property damage significant enough to report a claim."

     All things considered, said James Amaden of Amaden Gay Agencies in East Hampton, "we got pretty lucky, if you look at what happened to New Jersey." At his agency, the claims process was underway and functioning smoothly Thursday.

     Claims are being expedited to the extent possible, and insurers' pre-established "catastrophe teams" charged with handling such claims were readied in advance of the storm, said Mr. Brenneman.

     "Under normal circumstances, we would talk to our client, see if there was anything that we could do locally, and on that same call actually warm-transfer the call to the insurance company to make sure that the insurance company and the customer are talking to each other so that their claim is fully reported and expedited,” Mr. Brenneman said. “As a result of the communication issues today, we're taking the information from the client and then calling the carrier on a separate call. In some cases, we're asking if the client can help us by calling the company directly to facilitate it as well, because they can tell we're challenged with communication just as they are."

     Roughly 70 percent of the Cook agency's client base is east of Riverhead, Mr. Brenneman said. With such a high percentage of customers in a vulnerable area, the impact on insurers could have been devastating. "Certainly, the fact that the storm took the turn that it did and really minimized the strong winds that we got out here, I would say it was less than what we thought it would be."

     The increase in extreme-weather events around the country has fostered better preparation on the part of insurers. "Insurance companies have a way of spreading risk around," said Mr. Scioscia. "They'll take only the first part of a loss. It could be $10 million, $50 million, $2 billion, depending on how large the carrier is. Then they pass the rest of that loss on to a re-insurer. In essence, the insurance company will buy insurance on itself. So, they've gotten more sophisticated about that. Most insurance companies can withstand these types of losses. It winds up getting spread -- around the world, really, in a global re-insurance mechanism, and they move on."

     But another, contrary, effect of this upswing, said these brokers, will hurt policyholders in the form of higher premiums and, possibly, even a lack of availability.

     Insurance companies, Mr. Yates said, are in the business of predicting future loss, and have to ensure that they properly reserve for such events. "I think that this event in the Northeast will certainly drive insurance rates up, and may drive them up significantly," he said. "We already have an availability problem: Companies just don't want to write any new policies in our area of Long Island. I think this will just exacerbate the situation."

     The release from the Governor’s office, posted elsewhere on the Star’s Web site, includes advice for homeowners who have experienced property losses and need to make claims to their insurance companies.

A large self-reliant village has been set up at the East Hampton Airport on Industrial Road, Wainscott, as a temporary home with capacity for as many as 1,000 workers from around the country who began to arrive on Thursday. Many of the personnel, who have been brought on to get electricity restored to eastern Long Island, will sleep "ship style," three-high in large trailers.

The 36-per-trailer bunks have curtains, lockers, electrical outlets, and reading lamps. While the workers get some rest, their trucks are serviced and refueled on-site. Debris is removed, and are supplies reloaded. Trailers with hot showers, and cooking and laundry facilities are also provided.

Tents with long tables of hot food are set up by a contracted party rental company with workers from around the country. On Thursday, Tari Wilson, who is from Ohio, was setting up catering trays to be filled with beef stew. "We greet them and send them off with a smile, she said."

A spokeswoman for the LIPA media relations office said Saturday that 900 workers would be housed at the airport and that they would be deployed across Suffolk County.

Hurricane Sandy was "twice as bad as Irene," said Vinny Esposito, the staging-area's project manager, overseeing the work by Lexington, Kentucky-based Emergency Disaster Services on Thursday. For the Long Island Power Authority the 950,000 customers initially without power represented 90 percent of the utility's accounts, he said. As of 10 a.m. Saturday, the power authority's Web site was reporting 463,000 still cut off from electricity.

As of Saturday morning, LIPA was listing 2,200 without power in the Town of East Hampton, 7,700 in the Town of Southampton, and 222 on Shelter Island.

"There is rarely transmission damage," Mr. Esposito said, but from this storm, he said, there were "quite a few" major lines interrupted. The first day or two, he said, electricians had to restore power to the substations. Then, repairs could begin on the distribution system that carries it to the residences and businesses.

Mr. Esposito said electricians and tree-cutters are working "around the clock in 16-hour shifts" in what he called a restoration role. LIPA tries to hire local contractors, he said, but there simply are not enough in the region, so they have had to call on crews from across the United States.

On Shelter Island, workers' sleeping accommodations are at bed-and-breakfasts. They get lunch and dinner, such as burgers and spaghetti and meatballs at the central firehouse, as per the town's emergency plan, said Shelter Island Fire Department Chief John D'Amato. They also feed first responders and their families as part of the plan.

While managing the traffic flow of arriving tractor-trailers on Thursday, Ron Vulpis, a LIPA fleet manager, said that the level of East End damage is mild compared to the "extensive damage to poles, transformers, and wires" further up the Island.

Bunks were readied for workers at the East Hampton Airport.

Morgan McGivern

     Voting got underway early Tuesday in East Hampton Town with the disruptions from Hurricane Sandy, which shook the region a little more than a week ago, beginning to subside. Polling places remained the same as last year here, unlike in more storm-ravaged areas of Long Island, New York City, and New Jersey.

     At the Amagansett Fire House, where voters three elections districts cast their ballots, a poll-watcher for the Suffolk Board of Elections said that there was a rush when the doors opened at 6:30 a.m. with all of the seats for those waiting a turn filled. Turnout had slowed by about 8 a.m. Lines that had formed for gasoline in the hamlet's three stations were considerably longer.

     Betty Mazur, an Amagansett resident keeping an eye on the voting for the East Hampton Democratic Committee, said that one of the two vote-tabulating machines had stopped working for a short time just after the polls opened. It was back accepting the paper ballots in minutes, she said, once an apparent jam was cleared.

Polling Places

Town of East Hampton

District 1: East Hampton High School

District 2: Pierson High School

District 3: Amagansett Firehouse

District 4: Springs Firehouse

District 5: East Hampton Neighborhood House

District 6: Montauk Playhouse

District 7: Wainscott Old Schoolhouse

District 8: John M. Marshall Elementary School

District 9: Springs Firehouse

District 10: Montauk Playhouse

District 11: East Hampton Neighborhood House

District 12: Amagansett Firehouse

District 13: John M. Marshall Elementary School

District 14: East Hampton High School

District 15: Springs Firehouse

District 16: East Hampton Neighborhood House

District 17: Springs Firehouse

District 18: Montauk Playhouse

District 19: Montauk Playhouse

Town of Southampton (eastern)

District 1: Sag Harbor Fire Department

District 2: Community Bible Church

District 3: Bridgehampton Community House

District 4: Southampton: Hamptons Alliance Church, Water Mill

District 13: Bridgehampton Community House

District 21 Sag Harbor Fire Department (Brick Kiln Road)

District 31 North Haven Village Hall

District 36 Community Bible Church

Registered voters may search their election district and polling place at the Suffolk Board of Elections Web site at suffolkvotes.com.

Shelter Island ferry captains, police, firefighters, medical technicians, and a ferry passenger with a truck joined together to pull off the safe evacuation of a 92-year-old woman on Monday afternoon in the middle of Hurricane Sandy.

As the winds picked up and seas became increasingly dangerous, Detective Sgt. Jack Thilberg of the Shelter Island police received a call from a physician’s assistant requesting help for Virginia Jernick, whose situation was lifethreatening and beyond the scope of home care.

Police, doctors, emergency workers, and the family had to weigh the risks versus the benefits of transporting her off the island, with potential impacts from the trip including anxiety and exposure to the elements. There were also logistical issues. The North Ferry was not an option, Detective Thilberg said, because of the wind’s direction. “She was game for it,” Detective Thilberg said, but conditions at the South Ferry presented a greater challenge than expected.

With the ambulance unable to board the ferry ramp due to the high water — it was three feet above road level — the patient was carried by stretcher in the back of a Ford pickup truck, protected by a tarp and several emergency workers, as the boat battled floating debris and winds near 90 miles per hour, and waves crashed over its deck.

A Sag Harbor ambulance was waiting on North Haven, and transported the woman to Southampton Hospital, where Ms. Jernick was admitted.

It was the “highest tide we’ve ever seen,” Capt. Bill Clark, co-owner of the ferry company, said Tuesday. The ferry shut down around noon on Monday, when the high tide made it impossible for many cars to board safely. He said that David Lingwood, a ferry customer in line to depart the island to check on his own elderly father, had the only vehicle with high enough clearance to board the ramp. Many vehicles attempted it before Ms. Jernick was loaded onto Mr. Lingwood’s truck. She was “protected beautifully . . . wrapped like a cocoon,” said Captain Clark. Despite low visibility conditions due to salt spray, rain, and gusting winds, “The captains did a marvelous job,” he said.

Jon Westervelt, captain of the ferry Sunrise, said he has run the boat in hurricanes, but never anything this extreme. The captain said he navigated the Sunrise through the storm as bulkheads floated by.

“I did the best I could to keep her dry,” he said, and “tried to land as smoothly as I could.” Capt. Sherri Surozenski, who joined him on board to battle the elements, “was my eyes.” She kept a lookout for large floating debris, helping skirt an osprey’s nest, among other things.

Captain Surozenski’s boots were filled with water, making it difficult to walk. “It’s like having two lead balls on your feet,” she said. “The waves were breaking on my chest,” Captain Westervelt added, and “you don’t know what’s under the water, either.”

Cliff Clark, another co-owner of the ferry, was on the trip too, and jumped off on North Haven first to drag away logs and other large debris through three feet of water to clear the way for the truck to disembark. The Sag Harbor emergency workers “did a great job,” Captain Westervelt said. “They got her in the ambulance quickly.”

Throughout the ordeal, the Ms. Jernick was coherent, calm, and confident in her decision to go to the hospital, said John D’Amato, chief of the Shelter Island Fire Department. “She is an amazing lady.”

“It was fun,” said Captain Westervelt. “It was a great example of how Shelter Island operates in difficult times,” said Will Anderson, the island’s first assistant fire chief, and acting officer-incharge. He also had praise for Mr. Lingwood. It was an “extraordinary effort,” he said. “I was proud to be a part of it.”

This story has been updated to include Ms. Jernick's name. As of Wednesday, she was stable and comfortable at Southampton Hospital, her family said. They said they were grateful for the rescue effort that saved her life. It has also been updated to properly indentify the driver of the pickup truck; he was David Lingwood.

    Montauk became a virtual island for several hours on Monday night going into Tuesday when the sea joined marsh water to overtop Montauk Highway at the east end of Napeague. It was the first time the Napeague isthmus has been flooded to that extent since Hurricane Carol in 1954.

    Hours before Hurricane Sandy came ashore in New Jersey the storm’s surge, compounded by a full-moon tide, had raised the sea level considerably. Water in Montauk Harbor was lapping at marina docks even before a northeast wind began to blow in earnest.

    When it did, Block Island Sound once again rose up against the vulnerable Soundview and Culloden communities. A house owned by Janet Cole was left dangling over a badly eroded beach on Tuesday morning. Waves continued to pound bulkheads there throughout the day.

    To the east on Soundview Drive, the dunes separating the sound from Gosman’s restaurant and seafood market were leveled, leaving the road damaged. By Monday evening, ocean water was surging through the Montauk Harbor inlet, ripping the planking off docks at Gosman’s Clam Bar and at Salivar’s and Duryea’s Dock, and submerging the fuel dock at the Montauk Marine Basin.

    Carl Darenberg, owner of the Montauk Marine Basin, reported losing about 30 planks from his docks, “and we had a foot of water in the store, but I think we did pretty well. When the wind came out of the south it saved us,” Mr. Darenberg said.

    Chris Miller and his sister Tanya Miller at the West Lake Marina reported a foot and a half of water in the restaurant. Mr. Miller said water rose at least two feet above dock level. No boats were damaged seriously at West Lake.

    The parking area on the north side of Gosman’s restaurant became a beach once the low dunes were swept away. Emmet Gosman reported the loss of decking at the compound’s clam bar, but said the restaurant was not damaged.

    Commercial fishing boats tied to the town dock next to Gosman’s made it through the night even while water passed under them over the dock, past the Dock restaurant nearly reaching the West Lake Drive extension, an elevation of at least five feet. Two of the Viking Fleet’s party boats weathered the storm in Fort Pond.

    Star Island reverted to its original island status when the causeway connecting it to West Lake Drive was breached.

    As bad as damage was on Montauk’s north side, it was probably saved from total devastation when the wind switched from northeast to southeast earlier than predicted. What was good for the north side was bad for Montauk’s already-pummeled ocean beaches, however.

     Ditch Plain beach lost its dunes. The ocean poured through sand berms that the Town of East Hampton had hurriedly placed Monday morning at the East Deck Motel and town beach accesses and flowed through the streets toward Lake Montauk. The motel itself survived, but narrowly.

    Motel row in downtown Montauk sustained even more damage than during the approach of Hurricane Irene last year. The foundations of motels from the Royal Atlantic west to the Ocean Surf, and the Ocean End were exposed, the buildings themselves undercut. At Gurney’s Inn, the Beach Club restaurant and Beach Barge, directly on the beach, were destroyed along with a boardwalk. Trucks filled with sand to buttress the exposed motels were rolling into Montauk early Tuesday morning.

    Working through the day and well into the night both Saturday and Sunday, Montauk’s marinas succeeded in hauling most of the recreational boating fleet out of harm’s way.

     Hurricane Sandy’s winds and tides had barely dissipated  this week when Terry Bienstock, a resident of the Soundview development  on Block Island Sound in Montauk, blamed inaction by the state, county, town, and Army Corps of Engineers for leaving the area and the Culloden community to the west vulnerable to the massive storm.

    Soundview homeowners had brought a multimillion-dollar suit against the Army Corps and the three levels of government over a year ago, alleging that the jetties that mark the Montauk Harbor inlet are the basic cause of Soundview’s  eroded beaches. The suit is pending in Federal District Court in Islip.

    Mr. Bienstock said that in June State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, and Representative Timothy Bishop had joined Soundview residents in sending a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, asking that he release $1.9 million  the state had already allocated as its share of  what was to be a comprehensive project that included dredging of the Montauk Harbor channel and rehabilitation of the beaches at Soundview. Mr. Bienstock said the letter asked for immediate relief for homeowners “who are in fear of losing their homes.”

    As it turned out this week, the hurricane left one house at Soundview severely undermined and in danger of collapse. There was little damage to houses or bulkheads at Culloden, however, and a bulkhead built by Mr. Bienstock in front of his property survived.  

    Mr. Bienstock claimed the state had given the go-ahead, but that East Hampton Town, which had also agreed to allocate money to the major inlet and beach fix, would not sign off on the deal.

    Mr. Thiele said yesterday that, while the state had agreed to throw money at the Soundview problem, it could not do so until the federal government agreed to lead the project. For his part, Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said the town could not act until the town board had finished its deliberations with the Army Corps about which of three alternative approaches the corps had outlined would be implemented.

    About a month ago, the East Hampton Town Board had chosen an alternative that called for material dredged from the inlet to be used to rebuild the Soundview beaches on a maintenance basis. Emergency dredging of the inlet was completed recently while the major project has been stymied.

    Another alternative, to build a series of groins along Soundview beaches to help hold sand, was opposed by the Soundview and Culloden communities because it would have resulted in the beaches becoming public. It was noted that FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, would not allot funds unless the beaches became public.

    “The frustrating part of our problem is this was a manmade problem,” Mr. Bienstock said.

Waves from Block Island Sound crashed against sea walls along Soundview Drive in Montauk, dangerously undermining at least one house.

Russell Drumm

    To tackle what the Long Island Power Authority called an “unprecedented disaster in the Northeast” resulting in power outages to more than 900,000 customers Island-wide, a 5,000-strong force is working around the clock, the power authority wrote in a release sent yesterday to the media.

    Locally, according to LIPA’s Web site, lipower.org/stormcenter, yesterday at noon, the largest concentration of power disruptions were in Springs, with 2,399 reported outages, the area referred to as Hardscrabble in East Hampton, which is around Route 114 in East Hampton Village, with 2,234 reports, and Northwest Harbor, with 1,814.

    “The damage caused to Long Island’s electric system has been devastating,” LIPA wrote in a release on Tuesday. One thousand line repair and tree crews have been dedicated to assess damage and restore power, backed by thousands of logistics, safety, and administrative personnel. Assistance from outside the region arrived before the storm, and several thousand additional contractor repair crews and logistical support workers arrive daily, LIPA said.

    Crews must first rebuild the “backbone of the electric system,” the power authority explained, which entails working on the “high voltage transmission lines that bring power across the Island to the substations.” The storm took out 44 of the 185 substations on Long Island, they said, and a tremendous number of transmission lines.

    Once the substations are back online, crews begin work on the distribution lines that bring power into the neighborhoods, which they called “a long, grueling process.”

    The work does not always take place near the houses that it affects, they wrote, so lack of a truck does not mean that help is not on the way to restore power. They said that many employees survey damage in their personal vehicles.

    Lauren Abrahamsen Corsini, the wife of a LIPA worker, confirmed that on the company’s Facebook page, saying that her husband used his own vehicle, “and had to sit and watch a live wire for 10 hours.”

                                                                                                                                                     Jennifer Landes

    Once damage is assessed, the first goal for the company is to restore power to hospitals and critical facilities such as emergency services. The company coordinates with government officials at all levels, particularly in clearing roads for emergency responders and work crews.

    Outages can be reported online at lipower.org, or by phone at 800-490-0075. Information about outages and ongoing restoration efforts can be found at lipower.org/stormcenter.

    The Long Island Power Authority owns the retail electric system on Long Island and provides electric service to over 1.1 million customers in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens.

    As the final stretch of the race for a seat in the House of Representatives approached this week, more money  had been spent in the First Congressional District than ever before and the candidates had participated in more debates. Money and rhetoric notwithstanding, campaign leaders for the candidates, Tim Bishop, the Democratic five-term incumbent, and, Randy Altschuler, a Republican who is challenging him for the second time, expressed optimism.

    As of last Thursday, more than $4.2 million has been poured into the race by outside groups — $2.9 million to benefit Mr. Altschuler; $1.3 for Representative Bishop, according to the Federal Election Commission.

    The same F.E.C. data shows Mr. Bishop campaign had raised $2.5 million directly, while Mr. Altschuler raised just over $2 million. Mr. Bishop’s campaign had more cash on hand, $544,355, to Mr. Altschuler’s $204,137.

    Robert Pierce, a spokesman for the Bishop campaign, noted Mr. Bishop’s slim win in 2010 over Mr. Altschuler. “Eighty-five percent of House elections that year were determined by who had deeper pockets,” Mr. Pierce said. “We didn’t lose then, and I feel pretty confident that there will be a similar result this year.”

    Mr. Pierce, who was working at a hotel off the Long Island Expressway on Tuesday because Hurricane Sandy had caused a loss of electricity at the campaign’s headquarters, said more Democrats would turn out during this “big-ticket” election than in the midterm election two years ago.

    Diana Weir, a campaign leader for Mr. Altschuler, said yesterday from headquarters in Middle Island that a win for the businessman from St. James is “a sure bet.” “We have the momentum. We feel so much positive energy from our supporters.” Ms. Weir pointed to a lead in two recent Republican-funded polls, and said “Mitt Romney is gaining support in this district.”

    Mr. Pierce disagreed, saying, “People don’t really know who Randy Altschuler is.”

    Mr. Pierce has called Mr. Altschuler a “flawed candidate,” who wouldn’t be viable had he not poured over $1.8 million of his own money into the 2010 campaign. “This is a guy who flies a Tea Party flag in his office and takes extreme positions on several issues, but backs off when asked about them,” Mr. Pierce said.

    Mr. Pierce said people may not always agree with the congressman, who, he said, was up by 13 points in a Sienna poll in September, but “they can always trust him to do the right thing.”

    Ms. Weir, saying that Mr. Altschuler is “a family man with two kids,” noted that voters had “constantly heard about his first business. Why are people punishing successful businessmen?” She called Mr. Altschuler a job creator. “Jobs and the economy are what people on Long Island care about‚” she said.

    Mr. Altschuler, who has been endorsed by the Conservative and Independence Parties, has also been endorsed by Newsday and several Suffolk County organizations. John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House, showed support for Mr. Altschuler at a private event in St. James on Oct. 10.

    The Altschuler campaign has hundreds of volunteers, who range from high school and Stony Brook University students to community leaders, Ms. Weir said.

    Gov. Andrew Cuomo appeared with Mr. Bishop at a rally in Hauppauge on Oct. 26. “We are thankful for all of our supporters,” Mr. Pierce said,”but especially to all of the labor groups who endorsed Tim and knocked on doors and made phone calls for him.” He said the campaign had 500 volunteers.

    The campaign leaders agreed that the candidates had participated in an extraordinary number of debates, so much so that neither could say exactly how many. “It was around 30,” Mr. Pierce said, adding that House candidates usually debate five times at most. “It was an unheard of amount, but people found them informative and helpful.”

    “After the first couple of debates, they knew each other’s lines,” Ms. Weir said.

    A debate that had been sponsored by the Business Alliances of East Hampton and Southampton on Tuesday night in Bridgehampton, which was expected to draw a big audience, was canceled. The hurricane also caused Mr. Bishop to miss a forum sponsored by the Citizens Concerned of Montauk on Sunday, although he sent a representative. 

     On Tuesday Mr. Bishop will watch the election results at the Marriott Islandia, while Mr. Altschuler will set up at the Emporium in Patchogue, which is described as a multi-purpose venue, with a bowling alley, beer garden, and restaurant.

    People on the South Fork were consumed last week with preparations for Hurricane Sandy and this week with its aftermath, even while breathing a sigh of relief that the storm did not deliver its full impact here.

    Winds toppled trees and downed power lines, and coastal flooding reached apparently unprecedented levels even before Sandy made landfall on Monday afternoon, knocking out power to much of the area.

    According to data from the National Weather Service station at Upton, sustained winds were recorded at 79 miles per hour. Gusts of up to 85 miles per hour were recorded at Plum Island, and at Islip, gusts reached 90 miles per hour.

    “Town emergency personnel are surveying the damage, both for immediate assistance and for financial reimbursement,” East Hampton Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione said Tuesday. With the storm-battered areas of the Northeast, including East Hampton, declared disaster areas, the town and its residents should be eligible for federal emergency aid.

    Long Island Power Authority crews continued to assess damage and set priorities for repairs yesterday.

    East Hampton Town Hall, closed due to a lack of power early in the week, reopened yesterday. An East Hampton Town Board meeting, to include a hearing on the town’s 2013 budget, will take place as scheduled tonight at 7 at Town Hall.

    Before the brunt of the storm arrived, the Red Cross opened a shelter at East Hampton High School. One hundred eighty-seven people rode out the storm there, and 80 remained as of Tuesday night, primarily because their residences were without power. Bruce Bates, the town’s emergency preparedness coordinator, said Tuesday that he expected the shelter operation would be “winding down,” but that the Red Cross would decide if and when to close it, perhaps sending those still in need of sanctuary to the next-closest shelter, in Hampton Bays.

    Staff from the town’s Human Services Department lent a hand at the shelter and provided meals, with food donated by Waldbaum’s. Ten senior citizens, whose names are on a list maintained by the department of those in need of assistance during an event such as a hurricane, were transported by the town to the shelter in advance of the storm. Most were headed home on Tuesday, after personnel ascertained the safety of their residences. The East Hampton Senior Citizens Center on Springs-Fireplace Road was expected to reopen yesterday.

    The town’s ordinance enforcement officers and fire marshals were posted before and after the storm on roads leading to Amagansett beaches at Atlantic Avenue, Indian Wells Highway, and Napeague Lane, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said, to prevent people from going onto the beaches, where dangerous surf conditions prevailed.

    Throughout the day on Monday, before the full force of the storm hit, and afterward, town Highway Department crews worked to clear fallen trees and branches, keeping roads passable and paving the way for power company repair crews who need lines clear in order to restore power to neighborhoods and houses.

    Downed wires tangled in fallen tree limbs posed a problem for the department beginning early on Monday, said Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch. “We can’t touch trees with wires on them,” he said.

Downed wires tangled in fallen tree limbs posed a problem for the department beginning early on Monday.

Matthew Charron

    Under a new protocol developed after Tropical Storm Irene, and designed to improve LIPA’s response to electrical outages, municipal emergency operations centers compiled information about fallen wires and dispatched an assigned LIPA crew, together with local Highway Department crews, to locations according to their priority.

    The system “seem[ed] to be working very well,” Mr. Bates said Tuesday. For the first time, he said, East Hampton Village and Town operated the emergency response center jointly, at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street.

    “Last night we opened everything we could,” Mr. Lynch said on Tuesday afternoon. “By the end of today, we should have all roads open,” where downed trees were involved.

    With high tides, wild waves, and the storm surge, the Highway Department was challenged to keep roads passable, especially in areas where they were washed over or undercut from below by wave action and erosion.

    Mr. Lynch said the ocean breached the dunes along the Napeague stretch between 5 and 6 on Monday evening, with water several feet deep on the roadway within a couple of hours, cutting Montauk off from the rest of the town and Long Island.

    “With a bulldozer and lots of sand,” Highway Department workers toiled until midnight to get the hole closed up and the water held back. “We caught it in time before the road washed out,” Mr. Lynch said.

    The causeway leading to Star Island in Montauk was undermined and washed out, but Mr. Lynch said repairs could be completed by Tuesday night.

    Gardiner’s Bay broke through low dunes at Louse Point to meet Accabonac Harbor, filling the road with sand and debris. It was cleared off on Tuesday morning.

    Although Fire Department personnel knocked on doors, pre-Sandy, along low-lying stretches that were expected to flood on Louse Point Road and Gerard Drive in Springs, to inform residents of voluntary evacuation orders, three people remained on Gerard and were marooned there.

    Gerard Drive “was closed off and flooded from Springs-Fireplace Road all the way down,” Mr. Lynch said. At the two causeways on that road, water completely washed out the road. A contractor was on site Tuesday, working to rebuild those areas. “We hope, within two days, to have it passable,” Mr. Lynch said that afternoon. Meanwhile, after the majority of the road was cleared, the residents were able to get off the Gerard Park isthmus, albeit on foot.

    Before the storm, the Highway Department piled sand in front of unprotected sea-level beachfront openings, an effort that paid off, Mr. Lynch said. Sand at the end of Napeague Lane, for instance, protected the Beach Hampton neighborhood from flooding. “It worked. It never broke through there,” he said. In Montauk, a sand barrier near the East Deck motel lasted until the second high tide.

    Ed Michels, the chief of East Hampton Town’s Marine Patrol, said that water at the head of Three Mile Harbor rose higher than he’d ever seen it. To protect his agency’s boats, he said, he tied them on Monday afternoon to three 47-foot Coast Guard cutters that were secured at the town commercial dock at Gann Road.

    “This was probably one of the worst storms I can remember, and I’ve lived here all my life,” Mr. Lynch said, echoing similar opinions held by Mr. Bates and Mr. Michels. He praised the coordinated efforts made by all the municipal agencies and personnel, and the town’s emergency operations center. “All my guys are working hard, and they’re doing a great job,” the Highway Superintendent said. “The town is working as a team.” Mr. Lynch said he had worked closely throughout the storm with Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, whose efforts he also applauded.

    Mr. Wilkinson was spotted at daybreak Tuesday stepping out of his S.U.V. as he assessed the damage to West Lake and Soundview Drives and the surrounding neighborhoods. The dunes on the Sound side of Montauk had taken a ferocious pounding the night before, with rocks and boulders strewn across West Lake Drive and the parking lot by Gosman’s.

A man needed a boat to check on his bigger boat at Northwest Creek, whose waters were driven well up Northwest Landing Road by the storm surge.

Matthew Charron

     “We dodged a bullet,” said the supervisor. “When the winds came out of the south-southeast instead of coming purely out of the east, it started flattening a lot of the things here on the north side, and that prevented many of these homes from being destroyed. The breach in Napeague was serious. We jumped on that right away. The breach in Montauk, down by Nick’s, was understandable because we stacked up the other beaches and dropped sand, we prevented a lot of damage there. The town went through its drills this year, and got a big jump-start. It could have been far worse. Look at New York City.”

    He shook his head, got back into his vehicle, and drove off to inspect the Star Island Causeway, which had barely survived its battering. 

    A full Highway Department staff was on duty until 10 p.m. on Monday night, through the worst of the storm, and afterward. Mr. Lynch said he also stationed heavy-equipment operators, with payloaders, at the Springs, Montauk, and Amagansett firehouses, in case they were needed.

    At East Hampton Airport, traffic controllers were evacuated on Monday from their post in a modular building, and a “notice to airmen” was issued to inform aviators that they were not present.

    The seasonal control tower was set to be shut down for the winter yesterday, but with no power flowing to it, it was closed for the season a bit early, Jim Brundige, the airport manager, said.

    Most planes had been removed from the airport before the storm, Mr. Brundige said, but four aircraft that were tied at the east side of the ramp weathered the storm just fine. The runway was clear of debris, Mr. Brundige said Tuesday, and the terminal was up and running, with electricity but no Internet service. Air traffic was practically nonexistent, Mr. Brundige said, although a News12 helicopter did land to report on the effects of the storm.

    According to the East Hampton Town Web site, fees normally charged for dumping truckloads of brush at the town recycling centers will be waived through Sunday.

    With reporting by T.E. McMorrow

     A woman's body washed ashore at Georgica Beach in East Hampton Village Tuesday morning, according to Village Police Chief Jerry Larsen. Chief Larsen said a passerby noticed the body, that of a woman between the ages of 45 and 50, at 7:30 a.m. and notified police.

     The body has been sent to medical examiners for further identification.

     It seemed clear the woman was a victim of Hurricane Sandy’s dangerous surf, but no further details were available Tuesday afternoon. Chief Larsen said town police are investigating the possible link between the woman found on Georgica and a woman reported missing from Montauk on Monday night after she failed to return home from a walk on the beach with her dog.