Nor'easter uproots Rye Brook and Port Chester

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By Jananne Abel

A nor’easter blew threw Port Chester and Rye Brook last Saturday evening and left a great deal of damage in its wake, pulling up huge trees by the roots, dropping them on power lines, roofs and cars, blocking streets and cutting off power to more residents than during Hurricane Gloria in 1985.

“We had a very small hurricane with winds between 60 and 74 miles per hour,” said Port Chester Village Manager Chris Russo at Monday night’s village board meeting. “That’s what caused all the damage.”

A spokesman at the Westchester County Airport said the winds Saturday afternoon and evening, including the height of the storm between 5:30 and 5:45 p.m., were gusting to 55 knots or 63.25 mph.

Russo said there were 57 trees and 32 wires down in Port Chester and 12 streets closed. Thirteen hundred customers were without power. He said Con Ed had the best response he’s ever seen in his career.

“As of this evening, every live wire that was down was taken care of, they were replacing two poles and all streets are open,” he said Monday night. The village had removed three or four village trees that hit homes and had to bring in an outside contractor for one.

Dry ice was available at the Port Chester Senior Center on Grace Church Street.

As of Monday night, 1,000 customers were without power, mostly in the King Street-Tower Hill Road and Breckenridge Avenue areas of the village. That number had been reduced to 277 Tuesday night and 40 by Thursday afternoon. Thirty-six of those were in the Field Place/Tower Hill area where a transformer had to be replaced.

“Their official response is that they should have everybody up there on by tomorrow night,” said Russo Thursday.

A telephone pole holding a transformer had fallen on Captain of Detectives Al Schnell’s unmarked police car parked in front of his house on Field Place. His wife Emelia wasn’t a happy camper. Monday afternoon she was already impatient that the power had not been restored.

Her neighbor across the street at 12 Field Place, Cathy Downing, was more realistic, relieved when told it would be on by Friday. She had taken the day off from work and had gone to the library to do some work on her laptop. The day before she had gone to the Verizon store in downtown Port Chester to buy a car charger for her cell phone. She said they had sold more than 100 car cell phone chargers that day.

The Downings had no power and had borrowed a generator from friends to at least plug in their refrigerator.

Down the street at 15 Field Place two huge trees had fallen in the front yard at the Woods home and done some damage to the roof which was covered with blue tarps. One was a village tree and workers arrived to cut it up.

In Rye Brook, at the peak of the storm 2,259 customers were without power, said Village Administrator Chris Bradbury. By mid-afternoon Tuesday, that number was down to 900.

On Saturday and Sunday, streets were being cleared and the village was addressing downed wires so people and emergency services could get through.

At one point, said Bradbury, 24 locations had roads blocked due to downed wires. Additional roads were blocked by trees.

Con Edison assigned a liaison to Rye Brook, Port Chester and Rye City, said Bradbury, who worked with the Rye Brook and Port Chester Highway Departments to clear the streets, the primary concern Saturday night. The liaison arrived at 11:30 Saturday night.

At the storm’s peak, 173,000 customers lost power in Westchester exceeding the impact of Hurricane Gloria with 110,000 affected.

To help repair power lines and restore power in Port Chester and Rye Brook, utility company crews were brought in from North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Rochester.

“This area really got hit,” said Bradbury, noting that massive trees that had brought utility poles down were still blocking King Street in Greenwich Tuesday afternoon.

By Thursday late afternoon, less than 100 customers were without power in Rye Brook and those left were single outages or difficult spots that required additional work. “They expect that to be done by tomorrow night,” he said.

Crawford Park closed

Signs at the entrance to and exit from Crawford Park let residents know that the park was closed where 26 mature trees from 25 to 60 feet tall were down and others leaning Tuesday afternoon. “A handful of trees actually snapped where the roots held,” said Bishop Nowotnik, confidential secretary to Rye Town Supervisor Joseph Carvin. He said trees 30 inches in diameter snapped.

The park was closed because there were downed wires and the Crawford Park mansion had no power.

Nowotnik said it was going to cost $25-$40,000 to clean up the trees in the park.

“This was a storm that was not properly respected,” said Nowotnik.

The hope was to have the park open by the end of this week because parties and events are scheduled for next week.

Trees down everywhere

Assessing the damage on Sunday, trees had fallen on the roof and a Ford Excursion at the Barnes home at #35 Windingwood Rd., one of the worst cases of damage. A tree had fallen on a house on North Ridge Street and on cars in the Hillandale section of Rye Brook. But huge trees were down almost everywhere.

In Port Chester, a 75-foot locust tree fell on a two-family house on Smith Street owned by Juan Acevedo. He was working at the time, but his sister and mother were home. “It was before 6:00,” said Brunilda Cruz, Juan's sister. “We were just finished having dinner and I was going in the front room to make a phone call and as I’m walking in, I heard err, crack and then a big boom and then heard cringing and windows starting to shatter and pressure like a train going by for a second as the house shook and then my mother has porcelain figurines in the corner of the room on a shelf that flew off maybe three feet and a picture above the door flew from the impact. I knew the tree fell.”

She said she had been complaining to the village about that tree, located on the village right of way, for years, saying it was going to fall.

“I ran out screaming the tree fell, the tree fell in Spanish, get out, get out, and at the same time calling 911.”

Firemen came and kicked in the door, which had been jammed by the impact, to get her elderly mother, aunt and uncle out. Her aunt and uncle were visiting from Puerto Rico. She told them later: “Welcome to New York.”

In the end, no one was hurt. “They were more scared and fragile than anything else,” said Cruz.

Children living on the second floor thought there was a fire because of the plaster dust, which to them looked like smoke, filling the air.

Lyon Park looked like the time of the dinosaurs with 14 trees down, most of them in the vicinity of the Girl Scout House. That structure, along with so many houses in both villages, were spared. There were so many close calls.

Some of the downed trees in Lyon Park had been planted in memory of local heroes, soldiers killed in World War II, and had plaques bearing their name.

Four 75-foot pine trees were uprooted in my backyard on Quintard Drive in Port Chester, falling one after the other like dominos, changing the landscape forever.

Experiences to last a lifetime

Former Rye Brook Mayor Larry Rand was in Whole Foods in Greenwich at 5:45 Saturday night when the roof collapsed. He had gone to the store to buy organic bananas for his wife.

“I was standing by the produce section and saw the façade of the store fall, then saw the ceiling shake and the next thing I knew, I was hit on the shoulder by this equipment,” he wrote in an e-mail. It was the housing of an internal camera the store uses to detect a theft. He was uninjured in the ordeal.

The house of Rye Brook resident Mark Klapper and his family, who live on Charles Lane, were the last on their street without power. They were still without power late Wednesday afternoon when they was staying at the Renaissance Hotel in Harrison. Before that they had been at the Rye Town Hilton for two nights, expecting to have power back on by Tuesday. They had only booked two nights and were told that they couldn’t stay longer when they learned that their power had not been restored. It seems that the hotel was fully booked. While he was at the desk, a woman from Con Ed said she needed 177 more rooms. They already had a bunch. So the Klappers were displaced by out of town utility crews and had to find a room elsewhere.

“I totally understand that,” said Klapper. “I’m not trying to imply that I’m angry. As people were checking out, as rooms became available, they went to Con Ed. They had put a hold on them.”

Late at night, “the parking lot (at the Hilton) looks like a used car lot for bucket trucks,” said Klapper. “They’re all lined up.”

This is part of the March 19, 2010 online edition of Rye Brook Westmore News.

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