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How Superstorm Sandy changed rebuilding waterfront homes on Fire Island
FIRE ISLAND, New York (WABC) — It was 10 years ago this week that Superstorm Sandy hit the Tri-State and destroyed homes, washed away neighborhoods and changed the way many things are done.
That includes the rebuilding of waterfront homes on Fire Island as the landscape has shifted in the past decades amid the lessons learned.
The surge was coming and it was so powerful there was nothing they could do to stop it from breaching Fire Island.
“It’s hard to imagine what it was, that you would see that water this high just coming through town,” said Ocean Beach Mayor James Mallott.
And it took plenty with it.
Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point dredging contract for GLDD
Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. (GLDD) has won a $24,498,050 firm-fixed-price contract for construction of the Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point dredging Moriches and Shinnecock Inlets.
Bids were solicited via the internet with one received, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) said.
Work will be performed in Bay Shore, New York, with an estimated completion date of March 17, 2023.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, is the contracting activity.
The shoreline along the south shore of Long Island, NY between Fire Island Inlet and Montauk Point has a long history of damages due to beach erosion and coastal storms, notably from Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
The recommended plan includes sand bypassing and dredging, renourishment, breach response plans, mainland nonstructural measures, removal of Ocean Beach groins, and coastal process features for 12 barrier island and two mainland locations.
Brookhaven Town grants Sayville Ferry a 10-year lease to Cherry Grove
The Sayville Ferry — which has taken beachgoers across the Great South Bay to Fire Island since 1894 — was recently approved for a 10-year lease for service to and from Cherry Grove.
The Brookhaven Town Board unanimously voted 7-0 in favor of the resolution at the meeting on Aug. 25.
“After much negotiation, code amendment, and COVID, we finally do have a deal,” said Annette Eaderesto, the Brookhaven Town attorney. “In addition to the appraised value, the ferry service had put in some luggage racks at the town’s request, so we will be giving them credit for those for the amount due.”
Saving the History of the Pines on Fire Island
Bobby Bonanno created the Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society, collecting photographs and documents and conducting interviews.
By Julie Lasky
- April 29, 2022
Erosion is a theme of the Pines, with its wind-tortured dunes and combustible wood buildings. But Bobby Bonanno, 65, who works as a hairdresser in Bellport, N.Y., and has visited the Pines for more than four decades, was concerned about the erosion of memory. To protect the heritage of the Pines, the affluent, largely L.G.B.T.Q. hamlet near the center of Fire Island, he decided to create the Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society.
“It’s become my passion project,” he said of the historical society he founded in 2010, because “a lot of these young people who come here to party” — most taking the ferry from Sayville on the South Shore of Long Island — “they have no idea that gay men in the ’40s or ’50s were handcuffed to poles here when cops came over for night raids.” The police would take the men back to Sayville and jail them, Mr. Bonanno said. “And if your name was published in the paper, you were ruined.”
10 Years After Sandy, Fire Island’s Fragile Beaches Are Holding Up
A $170 million effort by the federal government helped the island recover in the aftermath of the 2012 hurricane, but residents recognize that another storm could wash all the progress away.
By Gregory SchmidtApril 29, 2022
After Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Eastern Seaboard in 2012, Jared Della Valle took action. The storm had destroyed one of his homes on Fire Island, a narrow strip of land off Long Island, and damaged another. So he decided it was time to move.
“I picked up my house and moved it down the block,” said Mr. Della Valle, the chief executive and a co-founder of Alloy Development, an architecture firm in Brooklyn.
The motivation behind Mr. Della Valle’s decision to move his damaged five-room house 150 feet — no easy task — was a $170 million effort by the federal government to fortify the Fire Island shoreline. As part of the project, 41 houses on Fire Island were slated for demolition or relocation, including Mr. Della Valle’s home in Ocean Bay Park, a community heavily affected by the storm.
Hidden in a Fire Island House, the Soundtrack of Love and Loss
By Julie Lasky April 29, 2022
Erosion is a theme of the Pines, with its wind-tortured dunes and combustible wood buildings. But Bobby Bonanno, 65, who works as a hairdresser in Bellport, N.Y., and has visited the Pines for more than four decades, was concerned about the erosion of memory. To protect the heritage of the Pines, the affluent, largely L.G.B.T.Q. hamlet near the center of Fire Island, he decided to create the Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society.
“It’s become my passion project,” he said of the historical society he founded in 2010, because “a lot of these young people who come here to party” — most taking the ferry from Sayville on the South Shore of Long Island — “they have no idea that gay men in the ’40s or ’50s were handcuffed to poles here when cops came over for night raids.” The police would take the men back to Sayville and jail them, Mr. Bonanno said. “And if your name was published in the paper, you were ruined.”Image
Coastal storm splits island and brings communities together
In 1992, Joseph Vietri, then a coastal engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, was walking with a colleague and a coastal researcher around Westhampton Beach, a barrier island located on the south shore of Long Island, New York.
A barrier island is a long narrow island that lies parallel and close to the mainland, protecting the mainland from erosion and storms.
Vietri said, “The island was recently beaten up by a Nor’easter. We were walking in ankle-deep water and started to wade into peat that must off broken off of a wetland.”
Peat is decomposed organic matter that acts like a binding agent. It keeps wetland soil together. Once broken free, erosion can accelerate dramatically.
He continued, “We looked at each other and said, ‘If something is not done immediately, this whole island is going to unravel within a week.’”