Local Beaches Are Scourged

East Hampton beaches took a devastating hit from last week's offshore storm. Yesterday, town and village authorities were still struggling to make a complete accounting of the losses even as they braced for the next blow.

At press time, the Coast Guard was expecting sustained winds of 40 to 50 knots gusting to 60. Seas were predicted to reach 18 to 24 feet offshore.

The anticipated northeaster was cut from the same cloth as last week's, a low-pressure system that generated huge ocean swells leaving one fisherman drowned, flotsam washed up from the distant past, and East End beaches swept away along with the structures designed to protect the houses behind them.

High Tide Threat

The storm waves certainly contributed to the sinking of the Miss Penelope, a dragger from Newport, R.I., and the death of a crew member.

William Rudin's elaborate "sub-surface dune restoration system" in Bridgehampton virtually disappeared in last week's storm. Stories on the sinking and the destruction in Bridgehampton appear separately in this issue.

By early yesterday, while the sea had given back some of what it took away, over 75 percent of the ocean beaches remained so severely scoured that the sea continues to lick the dunes and bluffs at each high tide even before the newest storm begins its assault.

Shadmoor Takes A Hit

Montaukers described the worst assault on the ocean bluffs in recent memory. The spectacular bluffs at Shadmoor took an especially hard hit. Ditch Plain, which has eroded dramatically in recent years, lost up to five feet of dunes in places.

The ocean's assault in combination with rain-flooded underground streams caused Montauk's bluffs to slough at an unusually rapid rate.

Larry Penny, the town's natural resources director, said the dunes in front of the Beach Hampton community of Amagansett were cut back at least eight feet in places. Most of Napeague's ocean beaches were so cut back that vehicles were no longer able to drive on them, said Mr. Penny.

New Storm

East Hampton Town officials were concerned that the new northeaster would threaten beachfront properties unchallenged, because the normal sand buffer is gone.

Early yesterday, however, Bruce Bates, an emergency-response coordinator for the town, held out hope the storm passing offshore today would not be as severe as predicted. No extraordinary preparations were being made.

A professor of oceanography at the State University at Stony Brook, which for years has conducted beach surveys in East Hampton Village, said his inspection of last week's damage revealed an inexplicable lack of uniformity.

"Some places were hit much harder than others," said Henry Bokuniewicz. "It's hard to generalize."

Blame El Nino

The National Weather Service announced this week that a warmer and wetter January had increased the potential for early-spring flooding.

"This pattern is consistent with an El Nino climatology, and we expect the pattern to continue for the next several weeks," said Solomon Summer, a Weather Service hydrologist.

Saturated soil plays an important role in the East End erosion process.

Pieces Of The Past

As usually happens after a strong swell, pieces of the past washed up.

A clay pipe from the 1871 wreck of the Pacific was found at East Hampton's Main Beach, the second pipe to come ashore in as many weeks. In Montauk, what looked like the copper-sheathed rudder post of an 18th-century ship appeared on the beach.

"The low-pressure was right in our window, in the exact place it needs to be to generate a large swell," said Bob Chartuk of the Weather Service.

Gary Conti, a maritime specialist with the same agency, explained that low-pressure systems are cyclones; that is, their winds swirl in a counter-clockwise direction.

"Waves generated by such a system move perpendicular to the wind direction," Mr. Conti said. "A strong north wind means the swells are moving east to west," as they did last week.

The wind caused a direct assault on the south-facing beaches, an assault that was amplified because of the new moon that fell on the night the storm passed offshore.

New moons and full moons create high, "spring" tides. The next full moon is due to occur Wednesday.

Northeasters

Northeast storms do not actually come from the northeast. They are generated in the Gulf of Mexico, or in the South, and typically move offshore and north along the coast.

When off Long Island, their counter-clockwise fury takes the form of northeast winds, hence "northeaster."

On Tuesday, Mr. Conti predicted that this week's storm would be powerful. The Weather Service's Long Island staff was huddled in preparation, closely tracking the progress of the storm, which caused severe damage in Florida Monday before heading offshore and to the north.

He held out hope, though, that the assault might be less direct, as indicated by the direction of the swells, and noted that the current phase of the moon meant lower tides.

Beach Lane Request

Erosion control was the subject of a special East Hampton Town Trustee meeting Tuesday afternoon, called by Scott Dobriner of InterScience Research Associates of Southampton.

Mr. Dobriner requested that his client, Harvey Silverman of Beach Lane in Wainscott, be allowed to spread 3,000 cubic yards of sand at the toe of a dune, the last barrier between the ocean and his house.

Mr. Dobriner reported that last week's swells had taken 40 feet of dune reconstruction - approximately 4,000 cubic yards of sand and beach grass - installed last year with the Trustees' blessing.

"This is sacrificial sand. We know it will not stay," the environmental consultant told Trustees.

"Maximum loss was at Wainscott," said Mr. Penny. The beach accesses there are closed to vehicular traffic because of the precipitous dropoff.

Okay Fill-Dumping

Mr. Dobriner said he had obtained a Town Department of Natural Resources emergency permit, and one from the State Department of Environmental Conservation, in order to dump the sand in time for this week's storm, but there was not time.

"We'll do it after this storm. We just want to get through this winter and do another dune restoration like the last one, with the Trustees' permission, of course."

Trustees praised the Silverman dune restoration, but worried that an open-ended permit to allow the continued "emergency" dumping of fill could create a dangerous precedent. They voted to allow the homeowner to spread sand as often as he likes until March 15, provided they are kept informed and no more than 3,000 cubic yards is dumped at any one time.