By Laura Lane
At around 1:15 a.m. on Sunday, May 16, Salisbury resident Kevin Nugent was sound asleep. That is, until a crash of thunder awakened him.
Thinking the boom was louder than he-d ever heard, Nugent rushed downstairs to make sure his wife and daughter were safe. They had fallen asleep watching television in the living room. They were fine.
But when Nugent looked out the window, he noticed that the Iamunno home across the street had orange flames shooting up the front door, apparently from a bolt of lightning. Nugent, a police officer, ran across the street, shouting.
Kevin was yelling, ÔFire, fire,- and telling Tony and Marie [Iamunno] to get out and to use the back door, said Nugent's wife, Lorri Coller-Nugent. He never yells, so when neighbors heard him, they all came out of their houses.
Adding to the confusion, the power of the thunder and lightning had activated several car alarms and knocked out power in the neighborhood. In darkness, Nugent tried to find the Iamunnos' front doorbell. When he touched it the flames shot up toward him.
Undaunted, Nugent ran to the side of the house and yelled some more until he saw Marie, 73, Anthony 77, and their grandchildren Maria, 15, and Joe Gordon, 11, escape through the side gate.
The Iamunnos' next-door neighbors, the Reillys, awoke when the crash of thunder sent all the plants on the shelf facing the Iamunnos' house crashing to the floor. That thunder was the loudest thing I ever heard, Robert Reilly said. My wife and I were up because we were waiting for our kids to come running into our bedroom.
Hearing Nugent-s shouts, Reilly ran outside. He grabbed the Iamunnos' hose and tried to put the fire out with it. Certain everyone was out of the house, Nugent hosed the house down. Other neighbors also struggled to get their hoses to reach the fire as the Iamunnos looked on, amazed by their neighbors' efforts.
We-ve only lived in the house for six years, and we know the neighbors only to say hello, Marie Iamunno said. They were all out there, and they didn-t even leave after the fire was put out. They wanted to help, offering for us to stay with them.
Three Westbury fire chiefs responded to the blaze on Cypress Lane, the first arriving at 1:33 a.m., three minutes after a 911 dispatcher received the call. Four trucks, including one from the Carle Place Fire Department, put out the blaze. We saw smoke in the rear of the house and the roofline, said Westbury Fire Department Chief Joseph Pascarella. The neighbors thought they had put the fire out. But there was a fire in the ceiling in the attic.
Pascarella said 40 firefighters helped open the roof to battle the flames. The fire was extinguished within a half-hour. But it took firemen another three hours to secure the area.
Another house next door, owned by the Walsh family, also sustained damage. My 6-year-old, Riley, was sleeping with me in my room because my husband wasn-t home, Colleen Walsh said. The damage was in his bedroom. Everything flew off his walls, and all the lightbulbs popped. Riley won-t go back in his room.
Walsh said there is a big hole above her son-s air-conditioner. That air-conditioner looks like it was fried," she said. "But the firemen said there is no evidence of a fire, and they aren-t sure what happened. The aluminum strip on the side of my house looks like somebody was mad and chewed on it and then ripped it off.
There are two 65-foot trees on either side of the Iamunno home. The fire department believes lightning struck the oak tree to the left of the house, then exited the tree into the house instead of the ground.
The bolt of lightning may have ricocheted to the tree to the right of the house, or another bolt may have struck it. The tree has visible signs of damage, but that side of the house was not damaged by fire. Lightning does what it wants to," Pascarella said. "This fire really wasn-t unusual. What was unusual was the intensity of damage that the one tree caused to this house.
This is a total disaster, Marie Iamunno said. And if Joe and Maria weren-t sleeping over, I would have turned over and gone back to sleep. If I hadn-t just hooked up my hose to do some gardening on Saturday, it would have been much worse.
The Iamunnos have received their first estimate of the damage, about $100,000. Not only do they have fire damage, but the lightning also caused pipes to burst, flooding the house. Much of the furniture is ruined, including the lacquered dining room set Marie loved.
It seems like everything has sucked up all the water. I lost so much, she said. People keep trying to appease me with the fact that I-m getting a new house. But I was happy with the way it was.
Many items can-t be replaced. I had 49 years worth of Christmas ornaments, and some of them my mother, who just died, made, Marie said. And all the slides, my memories from years ago.
Her husband's Christmas lights were also destroyed. People always stopped to look at my yard around Christmastime, Anthony said. I had lights all over the place, around 3,500 of them. They-re all gone now.
The experience has been an emotionally wrenching one for the Iamunnos and their grandchildren, who attend East Meadow schools. For now, the family is staying with the Gordons. They're looking for an apartment in the area, since they-ve been told that work on the house will probably take six months to complete.
An entire section of the house will have to be torn down and rebuilt, and there are plans to have the trees removed. Marie said she wouldn-t come back until they-re gone.
Though this is just the beginning of the long, difficult road that lies ahead for the Iamunnos, they are confident they-ll get to the other end with the support of their family. And with neighbors like theirs, it doesn't seem likely they'll be leaving Cypress Lane anytime soon.
For three days afterward, the neighbors kept asking what they could do, Anthony said. Being a good Samaritan is one thing, but these people are way above that.
