A fire broke out Friday night in an outbuilding at Marders, a garden shop and nursery in Bridgehampton. Smoke billowed out from the property, behind the Bridgehampton Commons, as firefighters worked to put out the blaze.
Silas Marder was one of three men on the 18-acre property at the time, packing up equipment from a film screening held there earlier. Marders is hosting its annual holiday open house this weekend, and was doing one last pass-through. "We were up in front of the property, closer to Snake Hollow, when we saw flames in the back," he said. "It was hard to tell what building it was because of the distance. It was big enough to notice, for sure."
Each man went running in a different direction. A storage building, about 30 to 40 feet in size, on the back right-hand side of the property, was found to be ablaze, and they called 911. Mr. Marder was later told that an aircraft had reported the flames as well.
The Bridgehampton Fire Department received the call at 6:48 p.m. Southampton Town police were on scene within a minute.
Acting Fire Chief Mark Balserus found "substantial fire load inside one building," which Mr. Marder said was used to store bagged bundles of pine needles, used for mulching and insulating purposes. Four or five utility golf carts were parked in there for the night, and miscellaneous hand tools were inside as well, he said.
Chief Balserus called in tanker trucks from Southampton and Sag Harbor Fire Departments as backup, should more water be needed. One of the hydrants firefighters tried to use was dry, he said, and they had to lay half a mile of hose to get to a useful hydrant.
Mr. Marder used a small Marders payloader to drag the pine needles around and out of the building so firefighters could douse hidden pockets of flame. "You could put water on the top of it and it's not going to get in all the hot spots," the chief explained.
There are three storage buildings that abut one another. The fire started in the one furthest north and began to spread to one of the adjacent buildings, where a skylight melted but there was no other damage. Mr. Marder described the three as "bare-bones storage buildings" with metal roofs and concrete walls. There is no electrical inside, so the possible causes of the fire are limited, he said.
Chief Balserus believes the fire was smoldering for quite a while in the packed bags of pine needles. The north wind blowing Friday night brought in "just enough air moving through the building to get it, because of the way all the stuff is in there," he said. "It's like an oven."
Michael Heller
Mr. Marder said it was lucky the fire had not occurred the night before, when winds gusted up to 40 to 50 miles per hour. He believes much of the storage building can be salvaged. The metal roof cladding was compromised and the doorways on the gabled ends were completely destroyed, but the concrete sides were not badly damaged. "It could have been a lot worse," he said, noting, with thanks, that there were no injuries.
"It was a great job done by all of our members," Chief Balserus said. He thanked Sag Harbor and Southampton for their assistance.
"I couldn't have been prouder of our community and our responders from the different departments," Mr. Marder said. "To see them that way, people I know really well and some I don't, it was really special to see that. It means a lot."
Firefighters were called back to Marders on Saturday morning, around 6:40 a.m., when smoke could be seen. Chief Balserus said there were no flames, just an area toward the back, inside the building, where the machine had been unable to reach a pile of pine needles.
The Southampton Town Fire Marshal's office is investigating the cause of the fire.
Durell Godfrey
