Ocean Takes A House, Three Others Moved

At noon last Thursday, Denis and Carol Kelleher owned a beautiful house perched on the edge of a Sagaponack dune with sweeping views of the ocean. Twelve hours later, after a sea wall protecting it caved in and its foundation was undermined, the Kellehers' pride was reduced to a pile of rubble on the beach.

"I'm still in shock and numb," Mr. Kelleher said this week. "It's something I feel very painful even talking about. We're devastated."

While the Kellehers' Potato Road house was the only one to be lost in the storm, other houses in a line along the narrow stretch of beach just west of Town Line Road in Southampton Town also were in peril.

House-Moving

On Friday morning, the area looked like a military staging area, with Southampton Town police blocking the road from rubber-neckers, and house movers, dump trucks laden with rock, and utility crews converging on the scene.

By Tuesday, movers pulled the house belonging to the Kellehers' neighbor to the east, Stephen Perlbinder, away from the dune and were preparing to relocate it several hundred feet back on his property.

To the west, a house owned by Barbara Slifka also was elevated on girders in preparation for the move landward. And a small cottage in between the two that Gary Ireland's grandfather had built in the 1920s had been moved back about 25 feet from its precarious place on the edge of a sheared off dune.

On Dune Road

On Dune Road in Bridgehampton, erosion had begun to undermine the foundation of the William Rudin house, where a costly and massive subsurface dune restoration system had failed the week before.

"For all intents and purposes, Rudin's house is totaled," said Aram Terchunian of First Coastal Corporation, who designed Mr. Rudin's system of sand-filled tubes. "Parts of the foundation have been undermined."

The house of Mr. Rudin's neighbors to the west, Ronald and Isobel Konecky, was protected by a temporary steel bulkhead that was erected even as the town fought in court to have it removed.

This week, Mr. Kelleher, who estimated his house was worth over $750,000, charged that it could have been saved if Southampton Town had moved more quickly to allow him to dump boulders to reinforce the bulkhead.

Too Late

"We could have saved the house if we just had permission to put in rocks," on Feb. 9, a Monday, Mr. Kelleher said. But Robert Duffy, the town's land management administrator who oversees emergency permits under the town's coastal erosion hazard law, did not okay an emergency permit for rocks until last Thursday, having earlier in the week granted a permit for sandbags only.

"They gave the verbal okay 15 minutes before it was too late," said Mr. Kelleher. "This was a house that was enjoyed immensely by my family, and it was taken away and it didn't need to be."

Mr. Duffy did not return phone calls.

"Very Emotional"

Mr. Kelleher said his troubles were compounded because the town had not approved his 1994 application to extend his bulkhead perpendicular from the shoreline to the dune to prevent sand from washing out behind it.

"I'm still very emotional and that's not a good time to make decisions," said Mr. Kelleher, who said he had not yet decided whether he would sue the town for damages.

He estimated that he had spent "tens of thousands of dollars, maybe into the hundreds of thousands, with everything I've done to try to save it." Insurance would cover less than a third of his losses, he added.

Counter Argument

But Supervisor Vincent Cannuscio said it was wrong to point fingers at the town.

"It's happenstance, negative serendipity," he said. "There are holes in the offshore bar that are moving. Where nature opens a door, the damage occurs, and that is what is happening."

In any case, the demise of the Kellehers' house was swift. Bill Horn, the property's caretaker, said he arrived there early last Thursday to find the storm tide pounding against the bulkhead.

"Instead of it just being a storm that was hitting the bulkhead, it was flowing over the top and taking the sand and pushing it out to the west," he said.

Gave Up

Early that afternoon, the undermined bulkhead "snapped open and folded over, allowing the sea to rush in, he said. By 3:30 p.m., the storm had carried away the dune in front of the house and washed away the deck.

Mr. Horan and other workers tried to salvage possessions from the house. "We heard a lot of cracks and snaps," he said. "There were splits in the walls and the corners were popping."

They gave up their efforts at 6:30 p.m. when it became clear the foundation was no longer stable. "There was nothing in there that was worth it," he said.

Town police reported that the structure plunged over the edge at 12:38 a.m. Friday. By early this week, crews had cleared away most of the debris except for large slabs of the foundation.

Fifty to 70 Feet

"It hasn't been very jolly," said Ms. Slifka, whose house was also in danger. "My house is right on the edge," she said. "One more bigstorm and it will be in."

Ms. Slifka estimated that it would cost her anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 to move her house to safer ground. "What else can I do?" she said. "These past 10 days we've lost 50 feet to the storms."

Ms. Slifka said it was time for the town to join forces with the state and Federal government to undertake an effort to replenish the beach. "I'd like to see a bigger beach for everyone," she said.

Mr. Ireland estimated that he had lost 70 feet of dune in the recent storms. "Thursday night I had a rope around the porch to try to save it," he said. The effort was unsuccessful.

Second Move

With the house left exposed at the edge of the dune, Mr. Ireland said he had no choice but to move it. "We're doing it on an emergency basis, and we'll try to finance it later," he said.

"We moved it one other time," he said. "It used to be 50 or 60 feet behind the crest. We had a lot of dune."

He said the house had been built by his grandfather, Brian Hamlin, a Bridgehampton attorney, in the 1920s. "It's just a little beach house," he said. The family preferred to keep it rustic, only recently adding an indoor shower, he said.

"It's really sad. It's an old family property," Mr. Ireland said. To get his mind off his problems, he said, he headed over to the Sagaponack School on Friday to play bingo. "It's been a stressful situation," he said. "I had to do something."