Worried residents of Napeague, who live in a part of East Hampton Town that’s next door to a vast state park littered with miles of dead trees, turned out in force Monday night to hear Chris Beckert, chief of the Amagansett Fire Department, address the hamlet’s Citizens Advisory Committee about a recent fire in the park, which came scarily close to some of their homes.
Those same people, only a lot more of them this time, had turned out for last month’s ACAC meeting as well, where the subject was the beleaguered Cranberry Hole Road bridge. The connection between the now-useless bridge — the natural westbound escape route from fire but now closed to traffic while awaiting repairs — and the danger to the east, is ever more obvious since the July 16 blaze.
And, as a Lazy Point area homeowner emphasized, “There are no hydrants on the state land, and 250 houses in the area,” 50 of them on Cranberry Hole Road.
“We are surrounded by dead pines,” said a resident of Dune Lane, which was one of the two closest streets to last month’s blaze (Shipwreck Drive was the other). “We need an escape plan. What to do if the wind comes from the north?” “Get in the car and drive west,” Chief Beckert replied, “because if it gets big enough, there’s a good chance Montauk
will be blocked off.”
Fifty firefighters, 20 of them from
Amagansett, put out last month’s fire (still “of unknown origin,” said the chief) in less than three hours. Rain this month would help, of course, but there hasn’t been much of it, and “we are going into a heightened season of risk,” he said.
For the firemen, he noted, the biggest issue is lack of access. Paths are needed through the branches and trunks now blocking their trucks, and on that score there is, finally, some good news.
At long last, Chief Beckert said, New York State has responded to pleas from town and fire department officials to do something about the hazardous conditions. “In the beginning, there was not much communication,” he recalled. “Now, the lines of communication are open, and a state contractor has been hired to get us better access.”
A plan is in the works, he said, to be revealed by the end of this month or in early September, and the state will pay for it. “The state assures me they have money to start this winter.”
The work will happen in two stages, said the chief: first, creating access, and second, burning down or removing the dead wood. “I am in constant contact to take it all away, but we got to see what the plan says.” (Town Councilman Tom Flight, the town board’s liaison to ACAC, commented that the burns would, fittingly, kill the southern pine beetles that killed the trees.)
Mr. Beckert told a resident who expressed concern about controlled burning that he was “not worried about any prescribed burn getting out of control. I will be in the woods myself. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s have the plan first. It’s not going to be a secret.”
In that case, came a voice from the audience, “Have you identified the houses most at risk? Give us a clue.”
Chief Beckert demurred. “Each fire and place and wind and access is different.”
“Can you identify the area?”
“Anywhere among dead trees.”
“In between Bay View and Mulford [Avenues], it’s starting to die. We want that on the plan.”
The chief advised the man to contact Tim Watson, “our local state park director,” about that. All around the room, people scribbled down the name.
Councilman Flight, speaking next of recent federal police activity at a Bluff Road residence, had little to report. There had been speculation in the hamlet that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was involved, but “the feds are not sharing information,” said Mr. Flight. Expressing support for Organizacion Latino Americana of Eastern Long Island, he added that “on a personal level, I can’t understand why it’s being done the way it is.”
Michael Rodgers, superintendent of the Amagansett School, agreed. “They’re not coming into the school without a warrant,” he said. “I don’t agree with it at all. Strange times.”
Labor Day is as early as it can be this year, on Monday, Sept. 1, and the school will open the day after.
