LIers' tales of their visit from Irene

LONG BEACH

Anyone missing some lobster pots?

Scott Richheimer looked outside the Allegria Hotel in Long Beach around 5 a.m. Sunday and saw lobster pots floating down National Boulevard.

"It was pretty amazing," he said. "I won't forget seeing that."

The ocean was flooding the street and the hotel lobby as Tropical Storm Irene plowed through the piles of sand intended to contain the surf.

In retrospect, Richheimer, the hotel's kitchen manager, said he should have retrieved some of the pots to see if they contained lobsters. "We could have served them for the dinner buffet," he said.

Richheimer also said he and other hotel employees were ready for Irene. Three buffets were prepared for guests, primarily reporters from CNN, The Weather Channel and other television outlets, and airline passengers whose flights from JFK had been canceled.

"No one panicked. We never lost power and the bar was open," Richheimer said.

He was supervising the cleanup Sunday afternoon. Pumps were working to remove 21/2 feet of water from the lobby. He doubted that a wedding planned for Sunday night could be accommodated, but said it was possible to do have it Monday.

-- JAMES T. MADORE

FREEPORT

Lifelong resident: Storms part of deal

On Fourth Street, where boats are docked in backyards along the Hudson Canal, homeowners said things like Tropical Storm Irene come with the territory.

Grace Remsen watched as her children, grandchildren and their friends helped pump out her basement, which had filled 5 feet deep with water.

As she spoke, a group of young men in a pickup tried to speed through the deep salt water settled in the street. The wake ran back up Remsen's driveway.

"We're used to this kind of nonsense," said the Freeport resident of 51 years.

Two weeks ago, heavy rains had also flooded Remsen's basement. Before that, it was Hurricane Gloria in 1985.

"You live on the water, this is what you get," she said. "Nobody got hurt and that's the bottom line."

-- PAUL LAROCCO

HAMPTON BAYS

Waves push sailboat onto front yard

When Thor Anderson woke up Sunday morning, there was a 28-foot sailboat on his front lawn in Hampton Bays.

The only problem: It wasn't his boat.

"It's about 50 feet away from my side door," Anderson said.

In the middle of the night, Irene's winds pushed the sailboat and its anchor from the middle of Shinnecock Bay onto his Montauk Highway property.

Like a lot of Long Islanders, Anderson didn't sleep well Saturday night, he said. He said he woke about 2 a.m. and noticed the sailboat's mast was getting closer.

"The storm came in and the anchor dragged," Anderson said. "It went up on the beach and dragged across the shrubs."

The anchor eventually caught on a pine tree, ending the boat's journey onto the shore.

"It was anchored in a poor spot, for sure," Anderson said of the boat, which sat toppled on its side. "I'll just have to talk to my homeowner's insurance and see what the deal is."

-- KEITH HERBERT

RIVERHEAD

Evacuees mostly glad they heeded order

At about 11:30 a.m. Sunday, the roughly 300 people who spent the evening at the Riverhead High School emergency shelter were given the OK to leave. They filed out en masse, carrying the suitcases, pillows and, in some cases, the small children they'd brought with them.

Many had faced mandatory evacuation from low-lying areas such as Flanders and manufactured-home parks in Riverhead. Although Irene did not produce the damage that had been anticipated, they worried mostly about their power being turned off.

Lucille Lutz had come from the Calverton Meadows manufactured home park and spent the night on a Red Cross cot. She was anxious to check on the cat, Lucky, that she left behind, but she was glad she went to the shelter. "I didn't want to be there alone," she said.

Eileen Borchart, 31, of Blue Point, was staying with her parents at the McCloud's mobile home park when they were evacuated. "It was hot," she said of the high school gymnasium. Still, she said town officials made the right decision in evacuating. "It's better not to take chances because I have my 20-month-old [Bella] with me."

The ready-to-eat, self-heating jambalaya served at the shelter was delicious, she said.

Gary Shaw, of Manhattan, who's in his 50s, was on vacation in Jamesport with his wife and three young children. The motel where they were staying was evacuated.

They were headed back to Jamesport to finish their vacation but were unsure whether the motel would be open. "I think it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow and I don't have to be back at work until after Labor Day," he said.

-- KERY MURAKAMI

LYNBROOK

Fallen trees make it tough on drivers

The rain picked up again late Sunday afternoon in Lynbrook, but John Suarez, 40, children in tow, was walking anyway.

He had no choice. His dead-end road, Devon Street, was blocked by a 70-foot black locust tree that had fallen the night before.

"It exploded," said the village resident. "Like a 'Boom!' "

When the tree came down at around 2 a.m., it fell directly on a power line, knocking out electricity to the block. Devon Street residents joined the more than 400,000 LIPA customers that lost power because of Irene.

But that wasn't the end of it. At the block's intersection with Broadway, the home that had the tree in its front yard also had another tree fall directly on its roof.

By late Sunday, it appeared the homeowner had yet to return to the property, as bricks and debris lay scattered on the lawn.

Village officials said they hoped to have the black locust removed by Sunday night, allowing residents to again access Broadway by car.

-- PAUL LAROCCO

WESTHAMPTON

Shop owners tend to Main Street stores

On Main Street in Westhampton Beach Village Sunday afternoon, many of the storefronts remained boarded up. Among the few business owners who came to tend to their stores was Anezka Jureckova, 49, of Quogue, who removed the tape over her window at Sweet Anezka's Lingerie. "We survived," she said. "I didn't sleep all night."

She had feared losing her entire inventory in flooding or if her windows shattered in the face of Irene.

She said she lost business the last couple of days, but did good business on Thursday and Friday. "We sold a lot of lingerie with people preparing for the long night." And she said she sells maternity clothes as well: "So maybe they'll come back in nine months."

Elyse Richman came to take off the plywood she had put on her store's windows and move back the inventory that she put into storage before the storm.

Standing near a U-Haul van by Shock Kids, a children's apparel shop, she said, "Thank God, there's something to take down. I was worried I was going to lose everything."

-- KERY MURAKAMI

LONG BEACH

Many homeowners start pumping out

Deborah Fournier returned to her apartment in Long Beach's West End neighborhood to find about 3 feet of water under the building and a little on her floor.

Her experience appeared to be the norm, as garden hoses stretched across sidewalks and into street drains from several homes on Nebraska Street.

"It's really not bad," said Fournier, 41, a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier. "Before we left I moved everything upstairs so it wouldn't get damaged."

Fournier said she evacuated to Oceanside with her elderly parents, her two children and a dog. "They said we couldn't stay, so I did the best that I could preparing the house and hoped for the best," she said around 4 p.m. Asked about the water being pumped from the crawl space, Fournier said Irene "wasn't as bad as the nor'easter we had a few years ago. I'm extremely happy about how things turned out."

-- JAMES T. MADORE

ISLANDWIDE

Evacuated hospitals ready for patients

Hours after Irene moved north Sunday, three Long Island hospitals that had evacuated patients began the process of reopening for business.

Long Beach Medical Center, which closed its doors and evacuated its patients Saturday, said it would reopen its emergency department and intensive-care unit at 7 p.m. Sunday.

Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, which had transferred or discharged 250 patients but kept its emergency department open throughout the storm, anticipated it would be able to take in new patients by Sunday evening, said North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System spokesman Terry Lynam.

Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip, which had evacuated 355 patients to other hospitals, was reopening its emergency department, labor and delivery, and neonatal intensive care units at 7 p.m. Sunday. All outpatient services are expected to be available Monday and operating room capabilities should return to their normal schedule Tuesday.

In a statement, the hospital said decisions on returning patients to Good Samaritan who had been transferred to other hospitals "will be determined based on the best interest of their care while respecting patient preference and safety considerations."

"The good news is that there was no flooding, no loss of power and no major damage to the building," spokesman Paul Barry said.

Long Beach spokeswoman Cheryl Chapman said the hospital and the Komanoff Center for Geriatric and Rehabilitative Medicine were awaiting word from Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano about whether patients could be brought back. About 70 Long Beach hospital patients were transferred to Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, and 164 nursing home residents were sent to various nursing homes around the Island after Mangano ordered Long Beach evacuated.

-- RIDGELY OCHS

OAKDALE

Neighbors stay, keep things going at home

On Cross Road in Oakdale, Tom Bongiorno, 66, said his pump ran all night Saturday and Sunday until 3 p.m., pumping out his basement garage. His cable line was dangling across the driveway, brought down by a tree branch. And his telephone service was out.

He still had power, although he said his neighbors across the street weren't so lucky.

He had obeyed the evacuation order, reluctantly, and said next time he might not. "I was laughing at all the people who said they were staying with the ship. They were right. To keep everything going when you have the worry of losing power -- I was imagining being under 3 or 4 feet of water."

-- JENNIFER MALONEY

NORTH MERRICK

Irene takes out 25-foot blue spruce

A North Merrick family bid farewell to a 25-foot Colorado blue spruce tree that had stood in their front yard for 21 years, until Irene's winds toppled it.

The family matriarch, who would only identify herself as Jean, said family and neighbors on East Webster Street were heartbroken. The tree took down the family's Internet line, while a blown transformer knocked out power to most of the block.

The family was using its generator for electricity. But she said their evergreen tree, which they lit up with 12 sets of LED lights every Christmas, was the real loss. They may plant a new one, Jean said, in honor of a grandchild.

-- OLIVIA WINSLOW

ISLIP

From landlord to lumberjack

John Marter, 45, used a chain saw Sunday to cut apart a tree that fell from the adjacent yard onto the rental property he owns in Islip. "I've been through it before, so I know the drill," he said of tropical storms. "We just got unlucky."

He and his business partner worked with another man and three boys, removing the tree so the tenants could get back inside. There appeared to be damage to the roof and siding.

-- JENNIFER MALONEY