While Tuesday looked closer to a normal winter weekday, East Hampton Village’s commercial core was eerily quiet 24 hours earlier, with many businesses closed and few motorists or pedestrians in sight after a foot or more of snow fell across the East End from Sunday into Monday.
On Newtown Lane, the Village True Value Hardware store was one of few businesses that opened on both Sunday and Monday. The store had been sourcing as much salt — and snow shovels — as it could to keep up with demand, said an employee who was on the floor on Monday afternoon. The hardware store must be there for the community, he said.
Likewise, the snow, wind, and extreme cold would not keep some outdoors enthusiasts inside. As they do every Sunday morning, a group calling itself the Bonac Bathers hit Maidstone Park Beach — and the frigid waters of Gardiner’s Bay — around 9 a.m. “If you don’t break your neck or have a heart attack, your joints will feel better and your headspace will be clearer,” Nick Kraus, who was among seven or eight who braved the conditions to maintain the regimen, said of the practice.
Cold-water immersion can offer health benefits including reduced muscle soreness, increased dopamine, and better circulation, as well as risks including cold shock and hypothermia. For Mr. Kraus, “it’s camaraderie. We all feel there’s some benefits to it. For me, it helps with bad knees, ankles, shoulders. Everybody else has similar maladies — life’s injuries.”
“When you go in in November,” he added, “it’s still refreshing, but when you’ve got people showing up with sledgehammers to get through the ice, it seems more daring.”
Snow on Sunday into Monday forced closures of schools and businesses as well as many town and East Hampton Village government offices and functions on Monday. Schools opened two hours late on Tuesday, and in Amagansett and Montauk, school was remote that day.
Winds were high and roads were treacherous from Sunday morning into Monday despite constant attention by the town Highway Department and village Public Works staff amid subfreezing temperatures that are expected to persist at least into next week.
Staff of the town’s Parks and Building Maintenance Department logged around 200 hours of overtime and the Police Department another 20 hours, Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said on Tuesday. The supervisor had declared a state of emergency from Saturday through today.
“Our highway folks were working around the clock” she said on Tuesday, and Patrick Derenze, the town’s public information officer, said in an email on Tuesday that most worked 24 consecutive hours on Sunday into Monday. Parks and Building Maintenance staff were at work at 6 a.m., Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said, and “we made the decision to plow the urban renewal roads to provide emergency access.” That work is performed by contractors, she said, who started in Springs at 6 a.m. on Monday and in Montauk at the same time on Tuesday.
Fifty-nine pieces of equipment including plows and trucks to spread salt on roadways were in service, the supervisor said.
The town kept an active presence on social media, posting updates for residents regarding the closure of the recycling centers and the Montauk Playhouse on Sunday, the recycling centers and town offices on Monday, and many Human Services Department programs on Tuesday, “but our senior transportation folks will be doing shopping for our seniors, for those that participate in the shopping program,” she said. Residents had been asked to stay off the roads and keep public streets clear.
“We want to say how grateful we are to our town employees who worked straight through this winter storm,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said in a statement provided by Mr. Derenze. “When conditions were at their worst, they were out there keeping roads passable, responding to calls, and making sure our community stayed safe. They take a lot of pride in their work, and our community does not take it for granted.”
Village Mayor Jerry Larsen said on Tuesday that the five-day state of emergency he had declared effective at 11 p.m. on Saturday would be rescinded by the end of the day. It was officially terminated at 5 p.m. “We haven’t had any issues at all,” Mr. Larsen said on Tuesday. “The public was very cooperative. We did a lot of outreach before the storm, so people knew well in advance that we needed to have them off the streets.”
The mayor said that ambulance and Fire Department volunteers had slept in the Emergency Services Building in case they were unable to get there due to the snowfall. He posted a message to the village’s Facebook page on Monday. The village departments “stepped up in a big way,” he wrote, thanking those in the Highway Department, ambulance, Fire Department, Police Department, and 911 emergency communications center. “Your professionalism, coordination, and long hours kept our community safe, moving, and informed throughout the storm. Roads look great. Response times stayed strong. Teamwork made the difference. Thank you for everything you do, especially when it matters most.”
