Brush Fire Continues To Threaten Hamptons

A brush fire raged out of control for a second day Friday near the Hamptons, turning the resort playground for the rich into a disaster area choked by 40-foot flames and billowing white smoke.

More than 1,500 volunteer firefighters waged a ground war against the fire with hoses, shovels and picks. Seven National Guard helicopters dumped 200-gallon loads of water pumped from a nearby lake onto the 5-mile-long, 1-1/2-mile-wide fire zone.

Despite the intensity of the fastmoving fire, no residents were injured. At least 20 firefighters suffered minor injuries; one was seriously hurt and taken by helicopter to a hospital.

The fire burned across 6,000 acres of land and destroyed a lumber yard and one home. The Westhampton commuter railroad station and at least seven nearby homes, mostly small, wood-frame structures, were damaged.

“It’s like being in hell,” said volunteer firefighter L.J. Heming, 33, of Middle Island. “We were right there in the woods and a wall of fire went right over us. We pumped every ounce of water that we had. … Everyone was screaming on the radio for water, water!”

Sources who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that investigators noticed a certain pattern in the way the fire burned, indicating it may have been set.

Threatened homes included slope-roofed, post-modern country houses typically sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the fire posed little threat to the more posh homes of well-known Hamptons residents such as Steven Spielberg, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.

An exception was composer Marvin Hamlisch, who hosed down the roof of his Westhampton Beach summer house and fled back to Manhattan on Thursday.