East Hampton Town Board discussion of a planned center for senior citizens, newly repositioned as the Center for Modern Aging, took an important turn last week when the question arose of whether or not the $28 million project could also provide badly needed emergency shelter space.
At a meeting on Aug. 6, Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who has championed the new senior center design, argued against the addition of an emergency shelter. That was not the final word, however: Two other board members argued that the building’s secondary use as a shelter should remain under consideration. Councilman Tom Flight said that as many as 3,000 people could be temporarily displaced during an emergency such as a hurricane, and that the current shelter capacity in the town is somewhere around 800.
It has been a very long time since the East End was hit by a truly devastating storm — 86 years, in fact, since the 1938 Hurricane blasted across the Island, leveling hundreds of houses — but more and stronger hurricanes are forecast as the ocean warms. Even for this reason alone, we agree with Mr. Flight.
If a storm like that of 1938 were approaching today, officials would order the evacuation of entire neighborhoods. Public shelters are necessary to accommodate evacuees who could not leave town or stay with friends, as well as residents and visitors with medical concerns. We shudder to imagine what the evacuation route along Montauk Highway would look like. In addition to increased capacity, a modern shelter could provide robust electricity and communications options — both of critical importance.
The last significant storm, Sandy in 2012, was only a warm-up act. A storm like 1938’s will come again, inevitably.
Wind-speed estimates derived from descriptions and photographs of the 1938 Hurricane are consistent with winds reaching 130 miles per hour. Not only were hundreds of houses on eastern Long Island destroyed, dozens were carried out to sea here and in Connecticut. Think how much less dense the housing stock was then, compared with our near-urban density today. Federal Emergency Management Agency mapping indicates the East End could possibly get gusts to 150 miles per hour in the next big one. A last-minute shift in a hurricane’s path could trap thousands. In the aftermath, it could be weeks or months before some residents could return to their homes.
At the moment, East Hampton Town is unprepared. Officials are unprepared. And that is why we think a discussion of the senior center’s being part of the solution should not be so quickly shelved. If not there, where?