Irene not so mean: Malverne, W.H. fare well during tropical storm

Downed trees and power lines were the extent of the damage left in Hurricane Irene’s wake — at least in Malverne and West Hempstead.

While thousands of Long Islanders were ordered to evacuate their homes before Irene struck around 2 a.m. Sunday — and many returned later that evening to find them submerged in several feet of water or covered in mud and sand — many residents of the village and its neighboring hamlet escaped with considerable luck.

“We were extremely lucky nobody was seriously hurt, no problems,” Malverne Mayor Patricia McDonald said. “We’re grateful that everything worked out as it did. It could have been so much worse.”

Tree debris, or vegetation, was the most visible indicator that a hurricane had passed through the two communities, according to Paul Jessup, superintendent of Malverne’s Department of Public Works. By Monday, most roads were cleared of fallen trees and crews were already at work chopping up the remains of uprooted trees and branches strewn across lawns. The Long Island Power Authority was working with local crews to address downed power lines, which resulted in power outages throughout Malverne, Lakeview and West Hempstead. As of Monday morning, LIPA reported that some 2,400 customers in the three communities were still without power.

“We expected it to be worse,” Jessup said of the downed power lines. “We’re in the process of restoring it as quickly as possible.”

Malverne Fire Chief Danny Morgan said he, too, had expected the hurricane to result in more damage. Luckily, though, only two houses and one car sustained serious damage as a result of falling trees. According to Morgan, one tree fell on two neighboring houses on Woodside Avenue; “Other than that, most of the downed trees are resting on houses,” he said. Jessup said a car parked on Sydney Avenue was “squished” by a piece of a large tree that fell and blocked the entire road.

None of the fallen trees affected the response of the Malverne Fire Department, which was on standby along with the Malverne Volunteer Ambulance Corps from 8 p.m. Saturday through 1 p.m. Sunday. According to Morgan, there were some 35 volunteers at the fire house and they responded to 29 calls. One members of the corps suffered a minor injury when debris got into his eye. He was taken to a local hospital, where the debris was removed, and released shortly thereafter, Morgan said.

Jessup had about 18 or 19 people working from 9 p.m. Saturday to 5:30 p.m. Sunday, removing trees and responding to other matters as they were reported. “They worked straight through, nonstop,” he said. “We worked right through the storm. They didn’t stop and say, ‘Well it’s ok, we’ll wait till it stops.’ No, they went straight through it.”

McDonald praised Jessup and his crews, Commissioner of Malverne’s Office of Emergency Management Bill Ward, volunteers with the fire department and ambulance corps, police officers and officers of the police reserves, calling them phenomenal and saying they were “right on top of everything.”  

Hempstead Town tree removal crews were also hard at work last weekend. They were mobilized Sunday morning and began clearing trees across the township, including West Hempstead and Lakeview. “Our crews have been wonderful,” Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray said. “We had 400 guys out [Sunday] from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. They never took a break or stopped working. Our first job is to clear the roads and let people have access to their homes.”

Murray went on to say that although many people were left without power across the town, herself among them, all town services were up and running by Monday.

Officials at both the Malverne and West Hempstead school districts were also on call throughout the hurricane, keeping an eye on their buildings for damage, flooding or power outages.

Much to the relief of administrators, both districts fared rather well throughout the storm. A tree fell behind the Maurice W. Downing Primary School in Malverne and damaged a fence, and another tree fell across the yard of the district’s administration building on Ocean Avenue, according to Assistant Superintendent Spiro Colaitis. None of the buildings sustained damage or lost power — a lucky break in a district that has no backup generators.

“We basically got out of this thing scott free,” Colaitis said.

Hurricane Irene also spared the West Hempstead school district — luck that was overdue in a district that suffered two very destructive incidents in the last year: in August 2010, one of the district’s buildings caught fire and just last month another building was damaged by extensive flooding.

Deputy Superintendent Richard Cunningham said several branches were strewn across the district’s various properties, and a large tree was down behind the high school. Other than that, it appears the district “really didn’t sustain any damage,” he said.

West Hempstead High School was opened as an emergency shelter along with nearly two dozen other shelters throughout Nassau County and several Hempstead Town relief centers. Despite all the evacuations, the high school, which the American Red Cross had designated the county’s first kosher disaster evacuation shelter in December, didn’t get much use last weekend. “As far as we know, no one came,” Cunningham said.

“It will be cold comfort to anyone who lost a house or a boat or a car, but with the severity of the storm, we feel like we got off lucky,” Murray said. “There was no loss of life, to our knowledge, as a result of the storm and based on what the predictions looked like beforehand, we fared better than we’d feared.”