The Montauk Fire Department stopped a chimney fire from spreading through a house early Tuesday morning.

The residents of 75 Glenmore Avenue were awakened by a smoke detector and called 911 at about 3:15 a.m., according to Ed Ecker, the fire department's public information officer.

More than 40 firefighters responded with six fire trucks, and they vented the single-story house of smoke. The blaze was contained to the fireplace, Mr. Ecker said, and the house is habitable.

Firefighters were back at the firehouse by 4 a.m. The East Hampton Town Fire Marshal's office was not called.

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Dell Cullum, a wildlife photographer who said he had thought he had seen it all, got several images of a body-surfing raccoon last week in the ocean off Amagansett.

While it is impossible to know whether the raccoon meant to go for a swim in the frigid water or if it had been accidentally swept up while taking a walk along the shore, one thing is for certain: It got some much needed help. Mr. Cullum, who first captured the spectacle with his camera, ended up helping the raccoon from the surf off Atlantic Avenue just after sunrise on April 10.

"First, I thought it was a scoter or sheldrake but as it neared I saw it had no resemblance to waterfowl at all. A seal maybe, but way too small. It finally got close enough where I was able to tell it was a fur-bearing critter, most likely a muskrat," Mr. Cullum wrote on his blog. "I switched my camera lens from wide angle to telephoto, put it to my eye and was surprised to see it was a raccoon. I immediately began shooting frames of the masked marauder swimming parallel to the shoreline. Every now and then it would turn in and ride a wave closer to shore like it was quite familiar with the ocean and the waves. Sadly, that wasn't the case at all."

The raccoon was fighting to keep above water, Mr. Cullum said, and it was overcome by a large wave and disappeared in the surf. "I was heartbroken realizing what was going on. A few seconds later, his head popped up, and he began fighting the current trying to get back to shore."

Mr. Cullum took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his pant legs, and with a golf ball scoop he keeps in his truck, rushed into the water to help. Extending the device about 20 feet, he reached over the water. On his first try, he dropped the scoop. The raccoon, however, grabbed onto its net, and Mr. Cullum dragged the soaked creature to the water's edge.

A wave knocked the raccoon off his feet, but it quickly composed himself — and "coughed up a lung of saltwater" in the process, Mr. Cullum said. "A few shakes and twists to shed a soaking coat, a stumble or two to get the gait and off he went . . . not up into the dunes, but along the shoreline. This one is bound to keep me confused and in wonderment."

Larry Penny, who writes a nature column for The East Hampton Star and was director of the Natural Resources Department for the Town of East Hampton, said he had never heard such a story before. "A lot of different animals go into the water to de-lice themselves or de-flea themselves," Mr. Penny said, however. "The saltwater is a better elixir than fresh water."

Four fire departments responded to a blaze that destroyed an Amagansett house and threatened several others nearby in the early morning hours on Thursday.

Amagansett Fire Department Chief Dwayne Denton said he arrived at 119 Miankoma Lane, believed to be under construction, with six or seven minutes of the 1:43 a.m. call. The house was already a total loss, he said. No one was inside the house at the time.

"It was fully involved. I don't just mean the flames coming through the windows. It was a big ball of flames," Chief Denton said. "Within six to eight minutes, the house collapsed into the foundation," he said. All that was left is a brick chimney and a charred Mickey's waste container in the front yard.

"My biggest concern were the houses across the street and next door," he said. The wind was blowing from the east and the embers were blowing over onto the neighboring lawns and roofs, he said.

Firefighters had to wet down the surrounding houses, which are 50 to 75 feet apart, according to the chief, to keep them from catching fire. In fact, embers gathered on the roof of the house across the street, at 122 Miankoma Lane, and set it on ablaze, burning a small hole in the roof, the chief said. "Very fortunate my guys caught it," he said, adding that there was no one at home.

Water proved to be a challenge. The flow from a hydrant on Miankoma Lane was described as a dribble, the chief said. "The mains there are old. There was no water pressure. So we went down to Main Street and got good water supply there," he said. When East Hampton's aerial ladder and engine arrived, he had them lay a hose from Bluff Road, which also supplied good water pressure.

An engine from the Springs Fire Department stood by, and the Rapid Intervention Team from the Sag Harbor Fire Department also responded. In total, about 70 to 75 firefighters responded. Many remained there until 4:45 a.m., though the chiefs remained until about 6 a.m. No injuries were reported.

Chief Denton said he didn't know what caused the blaze, but that he suspects it was burning for four or five hours before it was reported to 911 dispatchers.

The East Hampton Town fire marshal's office is investigating the cause, and fire marshals were still at the scene of the fire at about 9:30 a.m.

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Editor's note: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect address for the house.

Montauk Downs State Park is one of the crown jewels in the state park system, said Jerry Kremer, a former state assemblyman and ex-chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which controls the state’s funding.

Mr. Kremer played a huge part, with former Speaker of the House Perry Duryea, a Montauk resident (and “a tough guy”) in finding the money to save what he called one of the top 10 parks in the state.

The property was slated for development with some 200 houses when Mr. Duryea asked Mr. Kremer to help him find the money to buy it. After some heavy digging, he said, he found it in the state’s designated parks and recreation fund. He called Mr. Duryea: “I think I found about $4 million in parks.”

“This is a natural for us. There is nothing else like it on Long Island,” Mr. Kremer said on Sunday, sitting in the Downs cafe with a copy of his new book, “Winning Albany: Untold Stories About the Famous and Not So Famous,” on a table before him.

First elected to the assembly in 1966 as a Democrat representing the south shore of Nassau County, Mr. Kremer was re-elected 13 times. He was chairman of  the Ways and Means Committee for 12 years and is proud of the part he played in helping draw the tourist trade to Montauk. “Before this, there was nothing out here,” he said. “I’d like to think this golf course was one of the many things that cemented the area for tourists. They needed a reason to come to Montauk.”

The fight to save the Downs from a developer who wanted to create a housing complex on what was then a small golf course was not easy. Mr. Kremer, now a lobbyist who drives up to Albany every other week from his home in Bridgehampton, remembers other politicians asking him why the funds should go to Long Island. He told them it would make money for the state.

Before he agreed to help Mr. Duryea, the two flew out to Montauk in a single-engine plane that landed on a small airstrip at the park. It was a rainy day, Mr. Kremer recalled, but he could see the park’s potential and knew it would be profitable. He remembers seeing the ocean and thinking the site was terrific. Now, he said, “It’s a beacon for people who come out to use it.”

The bill that was passed for the money to be spent on the golf course was just one of many that he helped push through during his time as a legislator. He also takes credit for what has became known as the Lemon Law, which did not endear him to the automobile industry.

Politics these days is a nasty business, said Mr. Kremer. When he was in office, Democrats and Republicans kept a cordial relationship, he writes in his book, meeting for drinks even after a contentious battle on the floor. His friendship with Mr. Duryea, a Republican powerhouse, not only rose above politics but continued for many years after both retired.

His visits to Albany, he said, keep him on the edge of the game. But back in his day, holding elected office was a different matter. “We looked at it as what can we do for the next 10 years. Now, it’s what can we do in the next 10 minutes.”

He wrote “Winning Albany” after finding a box containing some 500 old photographs taken during his political career. It took him two and half years, and when he was done his publisher asked for two more chapters. He pounded them out over two weekends here, he said.

Mr. Kremer often speaks to schoolchildren, including his own grandchildren, who, he said, beam when he visits their classrooms. Proceeds from his book, which is available on Amazon, will go to charity.

He visits Montauk about five times a year to golf, but if he mentions to a course starter that he had a hand in saving the place it gets him no special favors, he said, laughing.

“I have a warm place in my heart and am happy to have made this contribution to Montauk,” he said before getting in his car to begin the drive home.

Sagaponack residents turned out on Monday in opposition to a proposal to construct a mansion at the corner of Daniel’s and Peter’s Pond Lanes rather than elsewhere on a 43.5-acre oceanfront parcel. At a Sagaponack Village Board hearing, they argued that the house would destroy the last unobstructed views from a public thoroughfare to the ocean dunes.

 “I don’t care how much it’s tucked in . . . it will obstruct the now sweep to the ocean,” Linda Bird Francke, who lives nearby on Fairfield Pond Lane, said.

Marc Goldman owns the property at 451 Daniel’s Lane (listed under Sagaponack Ventures L.L.C.), which would be permitted to have four houses on it as well as farmland, which already has been set aside in a conservation easement.

  Mr. Goldman’s house is to measure about 8,600 square feet with master and junior suites on the first floor, five  bedrooms upstairs, and four bedrooms for the help in a separate wing, plus a 2,300-square-foot finished basement and a 2,400-square-foot three-car garage and cabana, complete with steam shower, massage room, and gym. A pool and tennis court are also planned, along with access from Peter’s Pond Lane, which has the approval of the Southampton Town Trustees, who own the road.

Since first proposed in August 2013, the applicant’s engineer worked with the village’s engineers to locate the house outside a drainage course and redesign it from what Mr. Goldman described in a letter to the village board on April 11 as “a sprawling structure to a narrow one that fits on the elevations outside of the drainage course.”

“No matter how well you design a house right at the corner of Daniel’s Lane and Peter’s Pond, going this way and that way, it’s going to be obtrusive,” Tinka Topping, who has lived on Daniel’s Lane for more than 50 years, said. 

While it seems that Mr. Goldman, a Boca Raton, Fla., resident who said he plans to live there with his family, had chosen the least desirable area to build a house, he is somewhat restricted as to where it could go. In late 2006, before the incorporated village existed, he gave a 25.25-acre conservation easement over the farmland there to the Peconic Land Trust. He retained the right to build residential structures in four building envelopes on 18.3 acres — 15.8 acres that could be subdivided into three oceanfront lots and a 2.5-acre lot either on the northwest corner or directly behind the southeast oceanfront lot. That three houses could be constructed near the ocean dunes, in keeping with other development on Daniel’s Lane, was not mentioned during the hearing.

 Under a partnership with two others, Michael Hirtenstein and Milton Berlinski, Sagaponack Realty L.L.C. proposed a subdivision in 2008, the first the village board had ever heard, Mayor Donald Louchheim said on Monday. “But, it was abandoned by the applicant after it got to the public hearing process,” the mayor said. “At the moment, we are just talking about the plan that’s on the board, which is one lot on the corner.”

Elizabeth Barton, a Sagg Main Street resident, called it “step one in a two-step process that seeks to avoid a subdivision plan.” Ms. Barton, like many of those who spoke against the location of the house, said they would prefer to see the village’s vision realized of clustering houses.

“When you get down to it, it’s a significant property, we all know that. But it’s still a site plan for one house on a 40-some-odd-acre property,” said David Eagan, Mr. Goldman’s attorney. “I think it’s absolutely clear that the proposed location of this house fulfills the first site plan standard which is the least impact of the site plan and soils.”

“My concern is really puzzlement,” Ms. Francke said. “People kill to have houses on the ocean. . . . Why the applicant has chosen to be on the street is really beyond me, when surely the properties alongside the ocean are more valuable and far more desirable.”

However, in his letter, Mr. Goldman said the reason he had chosen the site was that it had the least desirable soils. He plans to have “an active and productive farm,” on the property, he said, and to leave the highest quality soils for farming. “I understand that the village’s site  plan standards prioritize the preservation of the highest quality soils as much as I do.”

Dean Foster, a Sagaponack farmer, said Mr. Goldman was proposing what farmers have traditionally done for centuries: “Take the worst farmland and put a house there,” he said.

Though some residents argued that the land was fallow, Mr. Foster said he had farmed parts of the property with cover crops, such as oats and rye, to preserve and enrich the soil, for 12 or 13 years. He called Mr. Goldman’s proposed siting “the perfect place for a house.” Mr. Foster said later that with building booming in Sagaponack, it was important for the community to consider prime agricultural soils in development.

Toward the end of the meeting, Ms. Topping indicated that she was having a change of heart. “I came in here very sure,” she said, but now considered the issue as “the farmer versus the view.”

In his letter, Mr. Goldman referred to the federal V.E. (velocity) flood zone along the oceanfront. “If a person chooses to build their house in a flood zone that is their privilege. However, forcing someone to build in a V.E. flood zone when there are other locations available outside the flood zone is onerous, especially when there is a location available on an already improved street corner,” he wrote. Obtaining flood insurance, he added, would also be much easier and less costly.

Mr. Goldman noted that renderings of a 3-D model of his house, which were presented at a Feb. 10 planning meeting of the board, showed that the impact on the view would be limited. “When traveling west on Daniel’s Lane, the renderings clearly showed that my house will be lower and less visible than the existing houses to the north and west,” he said. “When traveling east on Daniel’s Lane, the renderings show that it was obvious that you would not even see my house until you reach the intersection of Daniel’s Lane and Peter’s Pond Lane due to the height of the residence and 14-foot hedgerow located at 363 Daniel’s Lane to the west of my proposed house.”

The hearing will be left open until the board’s next meeting, on May 12, to allow for comment from the Suffolk County Planning Commission and feedback from planning and engineering consultants.

Some 200 people, including State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, and East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., gathered at the Hook Mill green in East Hampton Saturday afternoon for a rally to demand that PSEG Long Island bury high-voltage electrical transmission lines between East Hampton Village and Amagansett.

The rally was organized by Save East Hampton, a group of residents who have led the efforts against the utility project.

Public officials spoke of East Hampton's history of successful fights against other controversial utility and energy projects -- from the Shoreham nuclear power plant to offshore oil drilling -- and vowed to continue their efforts to see the power lines buried and the new, taller poles removed. Mr. Thiele and Mr. Cantwell voiced strong criticism of PSEG, and of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo for failing to respond to East Hampton's concerns. Mr. Rickenbach said the protesters had the full support of the village board.

The village board members Barbara Borsack and Richard Lawler and town board members Peter Van Scoyoc and Sylvia Overby were also in attendance. The Ladies Village Improvement Society, which recently announced its support for burying the lines, was well represented, too. The L.V.I.S. cares for East Hampton's street trees and is angry at how the utility has handled tree trimming by the power lines

Many residents have also criticized PSEG for work over the winter at its Old Stone Highway, Amagansett, substation, calling it "awful" and "an eyesore." At the rally, Mr. Cantwell announced that on Friday the town had issued PSEG a stop-work order at the Amagansett substation. Once largely shielded from view by thick vegetation, the substation property is now ringed by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire with no shrubs or bushes to disguise it. The town believes the project should have been subjected to site plan review before the East Hampton Town Planning Board and should have required a building permit.  

    Pranksters working under cover of darkness Sunday or early Monday installed a mock-up of a submarine conning tower in a controversial drainage sump off Route 114 in East Hampton. The sump, a roughly square pit just over an acre's breadth, had been left awash with runoff from the past week's heavy rains.

     Drivers passing by Monday were startled to see an angled black tower complete with what appeared to be a periscope rising from drainage pit's muddy water. The numbers "114" were painted in white on either side of the carefully executed craft, which stood about four feet high.

     Paul D'Andrea, a land steward who works in the Nature Conservancy office next door to the property, circulated photographs of the prank after arriving at work on Monday morning.

     There was no indication of who was responsible.

     An excavation contractor hired by the Town of East Hampton dug the pit in 2012, and apparently sold the valuable topsoil that came out of it to private clients. Though the structure worked as designed to reduce nearby road flooding, a problem surfaced when it was discovered that the town had improperly authorized the work without consulting Suffolk County, which long ago had bought the development rights to the farmland of which the site was a part. County officials were outraged.

     East Hampton Town made little attempt at a resolution until Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who had been the project's main proponent, left office at the end of her term in December. Since then, negotiations have resumed, with Town Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc taking the lead on a plan for a scaled down sump and the partial restoration of the property. 

A car slammed into the Red Horse Market in East Hampton Village on Wednesday afternoon, shattering a window by the food market's pizza oven and damaging brickwork on the building's exterior.  

East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen said an elderly woman was behind the wheel of an Audi sedan when her foot slipped and hit the gas pedal at about 1:50 p.m. The car jumped the curb and hit the building, which is in the Red Horse Plaza off Montauk Highway. The Audi sustained minimal damage. No one was hurt. However, the accident left employees' nerves rattled.

"I thought the oven exploded," Ismael Hernandez said as he swept the glass off the sidewalk in front of the building.

Mr. Hernandez was standing near the display cases full of pizzas, several feet from the window, talking to Gennaro Bruno Giugliano, the pizza maker, when the crash occurred.  

"Can you imagine if you were sitting over there?" Mr. Hernandez said to Mr. Giugliano, who was still visibly shaken 10 minutes after the crash.

"Thank God he had me talking," Mr. Giugliano said. He said the shards of glass would likely have fallen on him because he often sits by the window as he waits for pizzas to cook or be reheated.

Mr. Giugliano said Wednesday's incident is not the first time a car had hit the building. When Citarella's Tutto Italiano was housed there, vehicles struck it several times, coincidentally where the pizza ovens used to be located.

Jeff Lange, an owner, said the driver was a regular customer, who was shaken up but not hurt. The East Hampton Village Volunteer Ambulance Association responded to Red Horse Plaza, but did not transport her to the hospital.

Mr. Lange said the market would remain open.

Kenneth Collum, the East Hampton Village fire marshal, responded to assess the damage. Ben Krupinski, the owner of the building, also quickly responded and could be overheard telling construction workers to get a piece of plywood to close the opening.

Chief Larsen said police would forward the driver's information to the Department of Motor Vehicles for a review.

With almost all of the plots spoken for at its Chevra Kodetia Cemetery just outside of Sag Harbor, Temple Adas Israel is looking to expand the cemetery to neighboring property it purchased three years ago, but it has encountered a number of stumbling blocks including the fact that the East Hampton Town code governing the property may trump Jewish burial laws.

Chevra Kodetia is a small part of the larger 6.3-acre Jewish Cemetery Association land on Route 114, which Temple Adas Israel shares with another Jewish group. “We don’t get along,” Howard Chwatsky, the temple’s treasurer, told the East Hampton Town Planning Board, partly in jest, on April 2. “It’s part of our ethnic history. We’re still fighting.” The temple needs site plan approval from the planning board, but may also need approval from the town zoning board of appeals.

In the 1890s, the cemetery was divided in two, with the temple taking the smaller area. A fence still separates the two sections and there are two separate entrances. The larger cemetery’s lot line was extended in 2011 to include the new acre Temple Adas Israel bought.

Unlike the original cemetery property, the new property is in a water recharge district, where clearing of natural growth is severely restricted.

The town was unaware of the 120-year-old deal that divided the cemetery in two, and thought the added acre was going to the entire cemetery, according to a memo prepared for the planning board by Eric Schantz, a town planner. When first calculating allowable clearing on the new property, he based his conclusions on the larger cemetery acreage. A smaller cemetery would face even more stringent clearing regulations.

A conflict between Jewish burial laws and the town’s regulations regarding cemeteries in water-sensitive areas may be an even bigger problem for the temple. The town says that such cemeteries can only be approved “upon the condition that internment caskets be encased in watertight liners to restrict the entry of body decomposition and embalming chemicals into local ground or surface waters.”

Embalming fluids are prohibited in the Jewish faith; however Jewish law calls for burial in a plain pinewood coffin, according to Rabbi Leon Morris, the temple’s spiritual leader. The body is washed and wrapped in a shroud before being placed in a coffin whose lid is not nailed down. The goal behind the Jewish burial practice is to return the body into the earth, to complete the cycle of life, the rabbi said.

John Jilnicki, the planning board’s attorney, indicated Monday that, besides needing a clearing variance, the temple would have to go before the zoning board to allow burials in a water recharge district.

The temple’s attorney, William B. Anderson, warned the planning board at its April 2 meeting that it must be mindful of the Constitution’s prohibition against passing laws that restrict religious practices. The meeting was focused mainly on the clearing discussion. It also addressed lighting, entrance points to the cemetery, and defining the exact property lines.

“You have a 120-year-old cemetery next door,” Rabbi Morris pointed out. None of that land in the old cemetery is in the water recharge district. “There is no question that, if we had been aware of that demarcation, we never would have purchased the land,” he said.

There is a slight possibility the temple could find a solution in Jewish law if it is turned down by the Z.B.A. Rabbi Morris said that Pennsylvania for many years required all burials be made in “cement vaults.” Jewish burials at that time in Pennsylvania included placing dirt inside the vaults to allow the decomposition prescribed by the Jewish faith. If no solution can be found, he said, “We should look elsewhere.”

The temple has already laid out about half of the purchase price, which was between $225,000 and $250,000, Mr. Chwatsky said, yet it cannot sell plots to buyers. According to him, the temple was never made aware of the difficulties at the time the land was purchased in 2011 or during discussions with the town since then.

Now that spring has sprung, the sound of birdsong is sometimes eclipsed by the noise of hammers, leaf blowers, and backhoes. Everyone in the trades seems to be rushing to get ready for summer.

Besides the summer countdown, two other reasons seem to have contributed to its getting so busy now: Homeowners just don’t think about maintenance work during winter, a time of hibernation, and this was a winter from hell that created a backlog of items on tradespeople’s to-do lists.

Some contractors, gutter cleaners, and others were too busy in the last two weeks to return calls. Others local tradespeople, however, took time from their schedules to let us know what all that racket is about. A housepainter in Montauk, who had work from Thanksgiving left over because winter temperatures were so low, wouldn’t let us use his name since he’s now working at full capacity.

Kevin Keyser of Silverleaf Landscaping is among the many landscapers revving up their crews. He said he had been “going gangbusters for a month already,” working seven-day weeks, nine-hour days with a full crew. He predicted that “when it’s this busy now it’s an indication that it’s going to be a good summer season with plenty of work.”   

According to Danielle Quackenbush of Quackenbush Cesspools, if there’s one thing homeowners should think about in spring it’s getting their cesspool pumped. “If your cesspool is going to back up, it’s going to do it when you’re having a party or a lot of people over,” she said.

It may be too early to jump in the pool, but Shira Barzilay, the owner of Proper pH Pools, said the company was incredibly busy. “A good percentage of those who open their pools in late March or early April don’t want to see their covers; it reminds them of winter.” If March comes in like a lamb, she gets a head start, but this year, March roared in.

“Last week was our first full week outside,” she said, with the crew doing vacuuming and repairs and starting to excavate for new pools, which requires a minimum of 50-degree temperatures. Those lucky enough to haveheated pools, and there are many, might have good swimming by the end of April, she said.

East Hampton Village’s Village Hardware had a lousy March, but things have picked up enormously, Bernard Kiembock, the owner, said. Trouble is, he said that on Saturday there was nowhere to park between 11 and 3, “If you can’t park, you can’t shop,” a predicament that “almost shut us down last year,” when he said his April sales were down 20 percent. The good news for next year is that village officials have promised to change the parking regulations. “If I have more months like this, where I struggle, I’ll go out of business.”

Business has also picked up for Dick King of Dick’s Plumbing and Heating. “Right now we’re turning on water in houses that have been closed up, installing hot-water heaters, and doing small renovations.” He blamed his slow winter on new homeowners’ “bringing in their own people from UpIsland and not sticking with their old plumber.” Another sorry truth for Mr. King, who has been in business since 1977 and now works with his son, Doug, is that “a lot of my customers are passing away.”

The last thing some of us want to think about at this time of year is air-conditioning, but John Grant of Grant Heating and Cooling said, “We’re encouraging people to sign up for pre-season maintenance,” which entails a complete check of the system. Things can happen over winter, such as “a refrigerant leak or insects getting into the outdoor condensing unit.” And filters need regular changing. Pre-season maintenance, he said, allows him to “find the problem before Fourth of July weekend when your house is full.”

Business usually picks up for C.E. King and Sons, which sells awnings and marine canvas, on April 1. But this year they are still “getting ready for the springtime rush,” said David King, a grandson of the man who launched the business in 1948. Though the sun has peeked out occasionally, there’s still not a huge demand for retractable awnings. Starting mid-April, however, “We’re one-armed paper-hangers till July 15 when it slows from fever pitch.”

Bruce Bates of Bates Electric gets a lot of calls at this time of year from people who reopen their houses to find that things have mysteriously gone kaput. There can be several explanations, but he said the culprit was often an over-wintering rodent chewing on wires. Egads.

If tradespeople are busy, so, too, are those who provide other services for summer residents. Cynthia Kolbenheyer of Open Minded Concierge is helping clients line up chefs, housekeepers, landscapers, wait staff (for all those parties), and personal assistants. “When people get out here, they want to relax and not spend one minute grocery shopping or running errands,” she said.