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Watch Now • 2:11  https://tv.newsday.com/watch/long-island/towns/fire-island-officials-urging-action-to-repair-storm-damage-to-beaches-steve-mmj-bdfbmg04

‘The beach here is our roadway’

Fire Island officials push for repairs to storm-damaged beaches. NewsdayTV’s Steve Langford reports. Credit: Newsday/James Carbone; Photo Credit: Seaview Association Manager Larry Mattiasen

By Brianne Leddabrianne.ledda@newsday.comUpdated November 12, 2023 11:43 pm

The Fire Island Fire Chiefs Council is calling on lawmakers to immediately repair beaches damaged by September storms, describing conditions as a “ticking time bomb.”

Beach erosion in communities starting from Seaview, going east through the Pines to Davis Park, is preventing fire departments from traveling along the sand to provide mutual aid, said Joe Geiman, fire chief for the Fire Island Pines.

“I’ve been in the Pines Fire Department for 20 years and I have never seen it this bad,” he said. “I won’t permit any of my vehicles to drive on the beach unless it’s under emergency conditions.”

In a mid-October letter addressed to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and copied to Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) and several Suffolk elected officials, the council, of which Geiman is a member, said a “series of violent storms” during the week of Sept. 29 caused “severe erosion” on eastern beaches, compromising safe passage. Emergency responders on the barrier island, which lacks paved roads, rely on beaches to travel between communities and provide aid. 

“Given our unique location, and vulnerability to extreme weather conditions during the winter months,” the chiefs’ letter said, “a poor or slow response has proven it can be the difference in preventing a major conflagration or adding one. Despite all our best planning our current condition finds us sitting on a potential ‘ticking time bomb.’ ”

Schumer in a prepared statement Sunday evening said: “The pictures prove the case: Fire Island has been hit hard by storm after storm and in many spots erosion is getting much worse. That is why I first sounded the alarm, asking the Army Corps to conduct emergency repair of dune and beaches. . . . I will continue to push the Corps to make needed repairs ASAP and to utilize the resources I have already secured for their agency to get this job done.”

Geiman said during the summer months, “we rely on other Fire Island departments for mutual aid in case of an emergency, but offseason, like it is now, it’s even more important because our communities are less populated at this time. We have fewer firefighters, we have fewer residents in town and it’s even harder to get up and down the beach.”

To circumvent a shortage of first responders and the difficult geography, fire departments across Fire Island work together to provide emergency services to nearly 5,000 homes, according to the letter.

Fire apparatus and support vehicles on Fire Island are equipped to drive on sand and travel between hamlets on the beaches, said Thomas Ruskin, president of the Seaview association.

“Our departments are very interdependent on each other for mutual aid,” Ruskin said. “If there was an emergency east of Ocean Bay Park, you can’t get down there except on the beach.”

Geiman said that because Fire Island communities aren’t as populated during the offseason — typically the months between Labor Day and Memorial Day — there are fewer emergency calls; but that time period is also when there tends to be bigger fires, because that’s when many residents work on their houses.

The Army Corps of Engineers is currently working on the federally funded $2.1 billion Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point Project to reduce flood risk along its 83 miles of coastline. The Fire Island Inlet was dredged as part of the project, according to a spokesman for the Army Corps.

This month, the federal agency is inspecting areas from Ocean Bay Park to Davis Park on Fire Island for “any observable deficiencies that needs to be addressed,” an effort “aimed at discerning the present conditions and any forthcoming needs for periodic beach replenishment under the ongoing” Fire Island to Montauk Point Project,” said spokesman James D’Ambrosio.

“The Army Corps of Engineers, in conjunction with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Department of the Interior, is committed to mitigating erosion and flooding to all vulnerable areas of Fire Island and will leverage all resources at its disposal to do so,” D’Ambrosio said in a statement.

Requests for aid following the September storms on Fire Island were denied because federal law limits the Army Corps of Engineers to respond to damage caused by Category 3 hurricanes, he said.

“They did an analysis of water levels, waves, and duration and intensity, and those storms, they didn’t meet the minimum eligibility requirements,” D’Ambrosio said. “This is taxpayer money, so there’s checks and balances on it and this is what we have to work with.”

Geiman, however, maintained that repairing the beaches is “critical.”

“If there’s a fire in the offseason, there could be as little as three or four firefighters in town to fight a fire,” he said. “So if you have a windy, stormy day and you get a fire going, and we’re all wooden houses connected by wooden boardwalks, eventually everything in the town is going to burn.”

As you can see above, we have a difficult time ahead for our island, and it’s only October. Ophelia battered Fire Island’s east end more seriously than elsewhere, but island-wide we have great challenges facing us. This report is lengthy, but conditions warrant bringing you up-to-date and offering a look ahead. Tropical Storm Ophelia inflicted major damage on Fire Island beaches and dunes that were already eroded after Hurricane Lee passed by offshore. With five days of northeast winds and heavy swells over multiple high tide cycles, Ophelia hung around way too long and caused serious trouble. All communities were affected to some degree. Up and down the island, stretches of relatively minor damage alternate with swaths of severe berm and dune loss, sometimes even within the same community. This variation is primarily caused by gaps or ‘holes’ in the protective sand bar that sits right off shore. During a storm event, large waves typically break out on the bar and lose most of their destructive power. But holes in the bar can form and move along the island with the westward littoral drift, letting powerful waves roll all the way into shore causing ‘hot spots’ of severe erosion.

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Sen. Chuck Schumer warned that parts of Long Island’s prized beaches and nature reserves have been literally washing away and the Biden Administration has done nothing to replenish the beaches and stem the erosion.

Schumer, the Senate Democratic majority leader from New York, blasted the Army Corps of Engineers for their inaction in failing to restore large chunks of Fire Island’s pristine beaches, which were decimated by a slew of winter storms.

Fire Island helps shield Long Island from violent storms fueled by the Atlantic Ocean, while its status as a favorite summer getaway for city dwellers provides crucial jobs and tax revenue for the local governments in Suffolk County. 

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https://www.fireislandassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FIG-article_V2_GREEN.pdf

Dear Fire Islander, Welcome to this first issue of FIA Update. From time to time, we receive important information from FINS, New York State, Suffolk County, our two Towns, or our three ferry companies. These updates could relate to anything from emergency alerts, storm warnings, or news articles concerning Fire Island that appear in the media. We think you should be informed about issues that matter to all of us. In this Update we are sharing FIA’s response to a factually incorrect piece in a recent issue of The New York Times. Sincerely, Suzy Goldhirsch

RESPONSE TO THE NEW YORK TIMES I am sure that many of you have read (or at least heard about) the recent article published in The New York Times about restoring FI beaches, with specific focus on Fire Island Pines. (See a link to the article below). The Fire Island Association is circulating these notes to help keep you informed and to point out the misleading information in the article. The inaccurate statements include: Article headline stated that: “It Took $1.7 Billion to Fix Fire Island’s Beaches. One Storm Wrecked Them” ** Response: This is an inaccurate statement of the cost of repairing Fire Island beaches after Sandy. The $1.7 billion referenced here is the estimated cost of multiple proposed storm mitigation and resiliency projects scheduled for the 50 year FIMP program for 82 miles of Suffolk County shoreline. It includes road and home elevations on the mainland, several bayside projects, inlet dredging, and shoreline restoration in the Hamptons and Montauk.The price tag of the expedited restoration project for Fire Island alone was approximately $220-260 million – a cost that included beach and berm restoration for all 17 communities, mobilization costs for dredges, obtaining 400+ easements, moving houses back from the dune line, condemnation awards, the County’s legal fees, etc. ** After FIA requested a correction from the Times, the headline was changed the next day to “Millions Were Spent to Fix Fire Island Beaches. Some Have Completely Eroded.” Article stated that: “Most of the damage was done in the wake of a single winter storm last December that triggered rapid erosion on Fire Island and appeared to undo large parts of that decade-long restoration project in a matter of months.” Response: Since the completion of the FIMI project in early spring 2020, several winter storms and hurricanes have carried sand off our beaches. For the most part, however, the shoreline has repeatedly healed itself during the calmer summer months. Last year’s Christmas storm did indeed cause a lot of erosion up and down the island, but most of our shoreline—with the unfortunate exception of The Pines—has been rebuilding nicely this summer. Article stated that: Repairs for Fire Island beaches are “hamstrung” by Army Corp rules, a change from the more “flexible” earlier repair projects. Response: Yes, the USACE rules about repair and renourishment include negotiated and signed agreements between the Federal, State and Local partners. Yes, Congress must authorize the required federal funds. Before Sandy, however, our renourishment projects were “no day at the beach!” Funding through FEMA must be coordinated at the Federal, State and local levels, and the projects were complex, time-consuming, and frustrating. They did not move forward that quickly, and required relentless advocacy by FIA and our Fire Island communities. The clear advantage of the current USACE management of our dunes and beaches is that we are now part of a regional approach to storm mitigation, and we will be eligible for USACE/State/Local renourishment projects every 5-8 years for 30 years. Article stated that: Repairs on the island’s western beaches are scheduled to begin in the fall. But the Army Corps denied a request to expand the scope of the project to include the island’s eastern side, including Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove. Response: The repairs that are set to begin this fall on the west end of the island (Kismet to Seaview) are a response to Suffolk County’s emergency request to the NYSDEC and USACE for repair after a series of vicious nor-easters back in 2019. At that time, the west end was more severely damaged than our communities to the east. When the 2022 Christmas storms badly eroded the east end beaches, Suffolk County agreed (at the FIA’s request) to amend their original 2019 request to include emergency repair on the east end as well. Although the east end request was originally turned down, the DEC and Corps have invited the County to submit additional evidence about length of time of the Christmas storm conditions, wave heights, wind velocity, etc. We are hoping that the additional data will trigger a positive response for East End repair this time around. These inaccuracies and distortions demonstrate an unfortunate lack of fact checking and little understanding of federal, state and local coastal policies and programs. The community leaders in the Pines welcomed the opportunity to speak to a sympathetic visiting Times reporter about this summer’s erosion that kept the Pines Party from being held on the beach. However, the reporter (and/or his editors) reframed that specific Pines Party story and generalized the Pines damage to the entire island, then quoted outlandish cost figures, which in turn fed into the oft-heard narrative that taxpayer money should not be spent protecting our nation’s coastlines. The complex problems of sea level rise and climate change require a national dialogue about the critically important need to adapt, mitigate and possibly retreat from high risk residential locales where logistically possible. However, any evolving national policies must also take into account the importance of barrier islands (such as FI) that protect millions of dollars’ worth of key infrastructure on the mainland.FIA works very hard on these complex shore management issues with many government officials and agencies who have expressed their dismay over the Times piece. It is extremely frustrating when ‘the paper of record” gets it wrong, and confuses the public with misleading information. Regards, Suzy Goldhirsch President, Fire Island Association Click the link below to see the NY Times article It Took $1.7 Billion to Fix Fire Island’s Beaches. One Storm Wrecked Them.