East Hampton Town Manager: No Structural Damage to Town Buildings

Interim town manager Bob Drewry was emphatic at the East Hampton Town Council meeting Tuesday night when he said there was no structural damage to any of the town buildings.

That should come as a sigh of relief to town officials and residents alike, especially when there are reports of buildings crumbling on local newscasts almost nightly. Still, being able to say that did not come without a lot of grief, effort and expense for the town.

"We're proceeding to clear the snow off the community center, the firehouse, we're concerned about additional snow," Drewry said. "There is no structural problems. I reiterate, there are no structural problems with any town buildings as of right now. We just don't want to take a chance and receive another 18 inches of snow which could seriously cause some problems.

With major snow or ice events weekly and smaller storms sprinkled in between, towns across the state have been playing catch up.

"We had two significant snow events that sort of set the highway department back," Drewry said.

And their work continues. Drewy indicated that crews had finally begun to clear sidewalks.

"I know it's taken a long time, but they've been struggling to get this done," he said. "I think they've done an exemplary job."

With the large amounts of snow that has fallen across the area and the sudden and unexpected concern of buildup on roofs, towns have been forced to hire contractors to assist with the cleanup effort.

"We had to hire about eight local contractors with backhoes and payloaders to assist us in doing the roads, to get them widened," Drewry said. "It's going to be a significant amount of money. I do not have the amount yet."

East Hampton, like many if not all state municipalities, is hoping for federal aid through disaster assistance. The state Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security has been working with towns and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

"One of things we're hoping is that the state has met the criteria to submit an application to the federal government, to FEMA, so that we may get reimbursed for one of the storms," Drewry said. "We're looking at a reimbursement of about $60,000, which will hopefully cover the cost of the two storms that we incurred. We've also incurred some costs through the board of education of them doing the roofs. There were no issues with the roofs with regard to structural problems. There was concern with the roofs if we received more snow. We felt it imperative to clear the roofs. We got that done."

At the board of education meeting Monday night, school superintendent Dr. Judith Golden said that cleanup costs incurred by the school district ran in the 10s of thousands.

A rather somber figure that Drewry added to.

"It will be 10s of thousand for the board of ed. It will be 10s of thousands for the public works department," he said.

Though residents are finally starting to see above the shrinking mounds of snow, there are other concerns as winter continues.

"We're struggling getting material as all communities are," Drewry said." We can't get any more treated salt for a while. We're using sand and salt where we have to."

As for the problems with water leaking into the public library, Drewry indicated this was a long-standing problem.

"There is no structural concerns with the library," he said. "I don't believe that this particular weather caused that.

"It's problematic with the design, unfortunately."

Though there are no structural concerns across town, water leaking into the high school continues and the problem worsened over the weekend with serious leaking occurring in the locker rooms and some classrooms. On Tuesday, the problem appeared to be more widespread, though perhaps not as serious in some locations.

During public comments, John Hines of South Main Street cast his theory as to why this was.

"I don't believe there was water leaking in before there was people placed on the roof of these buildings. They hired people off the street. These contractors were driving around taking people off the street," Hines said, citing personal knowledge but presenting no evidence." The roofs are leaking now as a result of people getting up there, putting machines on the roof that were already overweighted. We didn't have a structural engineer direct these people. We just haphazardly went up on these structures, hired people off the street and had them remove the snow in the interest of saving the structure. In the process of doing so, we conducted damage to these structures. Who is going to pay to repair the leaks in the roof? We know for a fact there is structural damage."

In a rare response to a public comment, council member Thom Cordeiro said, "There is no fact to base that on." If there was nothing done with regard to the roofs everybody would have said, 'Why aren't you taking the snow off the roofs.'"