Well, it’s been a hell of a week around here. On Monday, a News12 Long Island cameraman tailed me to my car in the Town Hall parking lot after I had been in Justice Court to deal with an alleged zoning violation. Then on a rainy Tuesday morning, The Star’s heating boiler up and died and filled the building with a horrid-smelling smoke.
My friend Eric Firestone, of the gallery downstreet, had said some time ago that the building could “use a little love.” We had tried love with the old boiler through the winter. We even bought it a bright red burner for Valentine’s Day. It was far from enough.
Thick gray and black smoke flowed from the chimney as if from a coal-fired locomotive. I opened a side door, took a deep breath, then hustled downstairs to the cutoff switch, then ran upstairs as fast as I could to get a breath. Then I called it in to the police dispatchers.
The smell was almost unbearable and seemed to cling to the inside of my mouth. I ran in a second time to open the front door, next the back. A few East Hampton Village cops showed up first. I thought they were nuts for going inside. Rain started up again.
Things happened fast after that. One of the fire chiefs arrived. Next the fire siren went off. “That can’t be for this,” I thought. But it was. A first engine pulled up, then another. I saw a buddy of mine who is in the department pulling on his gear across the street. A couple of guys put on masks and air tanks, “getting packed up,” I think they call it, and went inside to check for fire and open all the windows. Their carbon monoxide detectors went off almost immediately, howling bloody murder.
It took me quite a while to realize I should get a few photos. “Instagram gold,” I said to one of the officers, who laughed and agreed. It was actually difficult to get a shot that took in the scope of the event. Emergency vehicles and the volunteers’ own trucks stretched past the 1770 House. The cops were parked in the library lot. A fire rescue truck blocked the Star driveway.
As far as I could tell, the incident was fairly routine for the responders. Firefighters set fans in the doorways and stuck around until the carbon monoxide levels subsided. Not that the building was fit to be in. I phoned and texted the staff to say they should work from home.
Through the day, the windows and doors stayed open. I taped a “Closed due to smoke” hand-written sign on a front window. A rep of a post-fire cleanup company, who had seen our Instagram post, stopped by with a brochure and a quick sales pitch; I admired his initiative.
We’ll see what the rest of the week has in store. I suspect it’s not done with me yet.