LI Native Living The Dream In Florida And Hurricane Irma

By Stacey Altherr

Sarasota Florida - Google ImagesWhen I decided to leave my home on Long Island to move to Sarasota last year, many friends questioned me as to why. Aren’t you worried about how brutally hot it gets in the summer? Aren’t you concerned that the high school won’t be as high achieving as the one here in Miller Place? How about the hurricanes? 

My answers were no, no, and, uhmm…

Storms always brought me anxiety. Partly, it is because I was spent much of my career as a news reporter and had to be at work –or actually be out covering – during storms. The bigger the storm, the more likely I would be somewhere up to my ankles in water getting quotes from fellow LIers, terrified that car would stall or run off the road. 

So, I figured that anxiety would follow me but at least I could be home and frantic. Seemed like a good trade-off. 

But this Irma. She was a beast. And she was headed right at Naples, planning on skipping up the west coast like a petulant child until her “Category Fiveness” slammed into my new hometown. 

Should I stay? Should I go? Phone calls from friends and family urging me to leave finally swayed me. I packed up my 15-year-old and headed toward the east coast—the Cocoa and Melbourne area.

The friend I was planning to stay with was evacuated since she lived on the river, so we ended up in a hotel, where, because of the kindness of staff, filled with homeless and others stranded by the storm.

Even the local juvenile detention center had to be evacuated, and took over most of the third floor where we were staying.

Throughout the night at our hotel in Cocoa, we had no less than five tornado warnings, forcing us down the staircase (no electricity meant no elevator) in the dark with our flashlight, only to have the danger pass and trudging back to our room. The wind howled all night. I peered out the window, too afraid to sleep, as things flew by – from palms from the trees to the 10-foot rain gutter pried loose above our room from the unrelenting wind.

Sarasota dodged a bullet. It fared well after Irma bent east over land. But as we all know by now, other parts of Florida were just devastated. The beautiful Florida keys, a place I love and one day dream of retiring, has been ravished by the wind and water. Irma went all the way up through Tampa, where storm surges caused extreme flooding. The storm continued its destruction up the middle of the state and across Georgia and South Carolina.

Yet, Long Islanders are not immune to hurricanes or any storms. Superstorm Sandy, which never even reached hurricane status, cut a huge swath of destruction across our beloved island, putting much of the south shore underwater for weeks. Snowstorms take lives and rattle us, as well.

In California, it is wild fires. In Mexico, an earthquake. 

No matter where we live, we must accept that natural occurrences will happen. I guess living in Florida, among white sandy beaches and flip-flop temperatures all year long, comes with a price.

For the next storm, though, I think I will catch a plane back to Long Island.

Stacey Altherr is a former Newsday reporter now living in Sarsasota, Florida. Her beats included Smithtown, where she covered governmental affairs.  She now runs a café in Longboat Key near her home and writes freelance. Altherr has won many awards, including a 2010 Society of Silurian Award for community service journalism for a multi-part series, “Heroin Hits Main Street,” and a third-place National Headliner Award for public service for a multi-part year-long investigation on spending at fire districts on Long Island.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - "Listen To The Cry Of The Earth"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

As the second monster hurricane—Irma—was getting set to hit, we were out sailing with a friend, a long-time resident of Miami Beach who last year sold her home on that built-up barrier island to move to higher ground in Florida. Looking from the boat at the passing coast and its structures, many all but on the shore, she commented about Long Island, like Miami Beach, becoming a victim of climate change and the rising sea level and extreme weather it causes.

What’s being done here about this here? 

There are efforts on Long Island to do more than its part to discourage the use of fossil fuels. 

Smithtown was designated a “Clean Energy Community” by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority in December. The authority said Smithtown was “the first community on Long Island” to receive the designation “recognizing its leadership in reducing energy use…and driving clean energy in its communities.”  In March, Southold Town also was designated a “Clean Energy Community.” 

The Towns of East Hampton and Southampton have both committed to renewable energy sources providing 100 percent of the electricity used in both towns, by 2020 in East Hampton and 2025 in Southampton. Solar and offshore wind are to be the main sources.

Solar panels turning sunlight into electricity and wind power are now cheaper, according to a variety of reports issued this year, than generating electricity with fossil fuels. These plants, mainly coal-fired plants, generate worldwide many billions of tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere yearly. They trap heat and are the main cause of global warming and thus climate change. 

“If we continue business as usual, we would get into catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change,” said Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, at a 100% Renewable Energy Forum in May. 

Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine has been in the forefront here on climate change. As he emphasized in a “State of the Town Address” in March, “We live on an island and have already begun to see some of the effects of our rising seas.” He spoke of all new home construction in Brookhaven now required to be “solar-ready” and the town replacing its street lights with energy-efficient LED lights. As for vehicles, after fossil fueled power plants the second main reason for climate change, he said the town is going to hybrid and electric vehicles. And when President Trump in June pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, Mr. Romaine, a Republican, issued a very strong statement criticizing the decision.

The denial that climate change is happening comes despite 2016 being the hottest year on record in 137 years of record-keeping—with the previous record-holders 2015 and 2014, according to a 298-page report of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and American Meteorological Society. As an article last month in National Geographic noted, the report also found global averages for sea surface temperature—key in feeding hurricanes—and sea level also “reached record highs” while the “extent of Antarctic sea-ice hit record lows.”

“Harvey Didn’t Come Out of the Blue. Now is the Time to Talk About Climate Change,” was the title of an article last week by writer Naomi Klein on Intercept. “Turn on the coverage of the Hurricane Harvey and the Houston flooding and you’ll hear lots of talk about how unprecedented this kind of rainfall is….What you will hear very little about is why these kinds of unprecedented, record-breaking weather events are happening with such regularity that ‘record-breaking’ has become a meteorological cliché.” We must focus on climate change “fueling this era of serial disasters….our last hope for preventing a future littered with countless more victims.”

Or as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff wrote early last week, Harvey has been “viewed…as a gripping human drama but without adequate discussion of how climate change increases risks of such cataclysms. We can’t have an intelligent conversation about Harvey without also discussing climate change.” 

And then came Irma, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane ever recorded.

It’s critical for the world to work together to try to stop what is happening. As Pope Francis, deeply concerned about climate change, says, we must “listen to the cry of the Earth.”

And also, as Dr. Robert Young, coastal geologist and co-author of the The Rising Sea, said in a presentation in Suffolk, people need to “relocate” from vulnerable areas and there should be “incentives” encouraging this. “I don’t say ‘retreat’ anymore.” That’s because Americans don’t like the sound of that word, he said, “No, we say relocate.”

Smithtown Man Dies In Motor Vehicle Crash

Suffolk County Police Sixth Squad detectives are investigating a motor vehicle crash that killed a motorcyclist in Selden today.

Jared Tepperman was riding a 2001 Honda motorcycle northbound on Boyle Road when his motorcycle struck a 2010 Honda Accord, which was also traveling northbound, at the intersection of Hemlock Street at approximately 4:10 p.m. 

Tepperman, 21, of Smithtown, was transported via Selden Fire Department ambulance to Stony Brook University Hospital where he was pronounced dead. The driver of the Honda, Stacey Rios, 44, and her passenger, Daniel Loria, 45, both of Selden, were transported to Stony Brook University Hospital for treatment of minor injuries.

Detectives are seeking the identity of another motorcyclist who was involved in the incident and fled the scene prior to police arrival.

Both vehicles were impounded for a safety check. Detectives are asking anyone with information on this crash to call the Sixth Squad at 631-854-8652.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Suffolk County Says NO To Hate

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Strong condemnation of the white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia has come from Suffolk County.

It is a county that itself has known hate. The KKK was active in Suffolk in the 1920s, Nazis had a New York area center in Yaphank in the 1930s and racial discrimination has persisted. 

A Suffolk sidelight in the Charlottesville situation: Christopher Cantwell, raised in Suffolk, was a leader of the “Unite the Right” rally that drew members of the KKK, white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Originally from Stony Brook, he was prominent in a widely aired Vice News documentary on the march saying “I carry a pistol,” “I’m trying to make myself more capable of violence,” “We’ll f… kill these people if we have to,” and advocating white supremacy. Described as an “unapologetic fascist” by Hatewatch, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Newsday reported that Mr. Cantwell “as recently as 2014” was a featured speaker at the Suffolk Libertarian Party’s annual fundraiser. He sought in 2009 to run for Congress in the lst C.D. on the party’s ticket, despite a criminal record that included incarceration in Suffolk. Most of Smithtown is in the lst C.D. He’s in jail in Charlottesville on charges of assaulting a man protesting the march, and also on three felony warrants from New Hampshire.  

A white nationalist from Ohio was charged with murder for driving his car into people against the march leaving a 32-year-old woman dead and 19 injured… 

A “Joint Statement on the Charlottesville Violence” was issued by leading human rights organizations in Suffolk: the Center for Social Justice & Human Understanding, the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission and the Suffolk County Anti-Bias Task Force.

The groups said “we stand together with people of good will to denounce the racist and hate-filled actions and words witnessed in Charlottesville, Virginia. We urge our Suffolk County community and our nation to stand strong against the modern day rising of white nationalist organizations and say: No to Hate!!!”

They continued: “If you have ever wondered what you would have done in history during times of increased racism, hatred, and ultimately persecution, all the residents of our county now have an opportunity to do something. When radical ‘nationalists’ rallied behind Adolph Hitler and supported the systematic extermination of over six million Jews and others deemed undeserving to exist, much of the world stood silent. From the Holocaust, harsh lessons were learned about the impact of bystanders…We continue to learn the lesson of silence every day as we witness genocides throughout the world.”

“It is time,” said the organizations, “to speak out and stand tall.” They asked people to join in with them demanding “Never Again! Not here and not anywhere!”

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor announced his backing of a call by Governor Andrew Cuomo to include inciting to riot and rioting in New York State’s hate crimes law. Mr. Thiele said: “The tragedy in Charlottesville demonstrates that we have entered a dangerous time in America history when the activities of hate groups like the neo-Nazis, the KKK, white nationalists and the alt-right are on the rise. “

He continued that “even” in Suffolk there has been “KKK activity recently. These groups are only further encouraged by national leaders who fail to clearly condemn these activities in unequivocal terms…Hate must be condemned in the strongest possible terms and the law must reflect that commitment to justice and equality.”

Meanwhile, Erase Racism, a group that challenges bias in Suffolk and Nassau, declared: “It’s back. Violence and murder in the streets; not in some far off land but in the streets of the United States. Neo-Nazi, white supremacists, Klansmen; all members of the loosely defined alt-right were the on-site perpetrators of violence in Charlottesville…If all we do is mourn and be outraged, we fail to pull our country out of a perilous downward spiral of hate.”

The new book, “Civil Rights on Long Island” by Chris Verga tells of how in the1920s one out of seven Long Islanders were KKK members and the hate group was a major political force in Suffolk. In the 1930s, Camp Siegfried was set up in Yaphank as a New York Area center for Nazis.  It included a parade ground and streets named for Hitler and henchmen. Continuing racism in Suffolk was demonstrated two weeks ago when the Village of Mastic Beach agreed in U.S. District Court to pay damages to six African-American former residents wrongly evicted from their rental homes by the village administrator.

The claim by President Trump that there were “some very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville was outrageous. As Mr. Thiele said, the activities of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, etc. must be condemned “in unequivocal terms.” Seventy-two years ago, the United States and Allied nations won a war against fascism. It must never return. Never Again! 

Free Opioid Overdose Prevention Training

Today Marks International Overdose Awareness Day

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone today encouraged residents to attend a free Opioid Overdose Prevention training held by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services. The training, which meets New York State Department of Health requirements, will enable participants to recognize an opioid overdose, administer intranasal naloxone - commonly referred to as Narcan - and take additional steps until EMS arrives. Participants will receive a certificate of completion and an emergency resuscitation kit that includes Narcan.

“As we mark International Overdose Awareness Day, we are reminded of the unimaginable grief felt by families who have watched their loved ones struggle or lose their lives from a drug overdose,” said Suffolk County Executive Bellone.  “Suffolk County will continue to lead the way in taking action to combat this scourge, and I encourage all residents to attend a class to learn how they can play a role in our efforts to address this national epidemic.”

The Suffolk County Department of Health Services’ Office of Health Education will hold its next class on Monday, September 18 at 6:00 p.m., located at 725 Veterans Memorial Highway, Bldg. C016 in Hauppauge.  To register, residents should contact wanda.ortiz@suffolkcountyny.gov or call 631-853-4017.

Dr. James Tomarken, Commissioner of Suffolk County Health Services, said: “We encourage all persons and their friends and family members who are dealing with substance abuse and who need assistance to take advantage of the resources listed on Suffolk County’s substance abuse page.  We also wish to reduce the chances of overdose by encouraging all residents to participate in our Opioid Overdose Prevention Program.”

Those who need immediate assistance may contact Suffolk County’s 24/7 Substance Abuse Hotline at 631-979-1700. Callers will be connected to treatment services and receive timely access to quality substance abuse care.  

For more information and resources for dealing with substance abuse, please visit Suffolk County’s Substance Abuse Resource Center.