Breezy Point, Battered Seaside Haven, Recalls Its Trial by Fire

On the night Hurricane Sandy hit, two dozen members of the Point Breeze Volunteer Fire Department congregated in their snug firehouse in Breezy Point, Queens, not far from Jamaica Bay. It is a compact colony of 2,837 homes that undulates along the western tip of the Rockaway Peninsula, cradled between the bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

About 6:30 p.m., two turkeys beckoned on the table. The crew members barely savored a swallow when water lashed at their knees. Forsaking dinner, they scattered to the Clubhouse, a humble community center behind the firehouse that was several feet higher. A few residents had found sanctuary there. Homes were flooding and being hacked apart. The Sugar Bowl, a favorite bar, disappeared. Before long, water infiltrated the Clubhouse.

Through the windows, the firefighters glimpsed the orange glow of a fire in the dark maw of the night. There was little rain. The water was four feet deep, bearing waves and wicked currents. “It was like the ocean was outside,” said Kevin Hernandez, 21, another volunteer firefighter. “The wind was 80 miles an hour.”

It was impossible to reach the fire. They stared at the very menace they were committed to conquering, watching it strengthen, and could do nothing. On a night not meant for humankind, they could not help but wonder if they stood on death’s doorstep.

It was about then that they began praying.

Among the many cruelties delivered by Hurricane Sandy, the Breezy Point fire has inscribed itself as one of the storm’s hellish signatures. Ranking with the worst residential fires in New York City’s history, it burned down 126 homes and damaged 22 more, leaving a conspicuous hole in the heart of this genial shore community. The storm hit Oct. 29 and about two months later, the neighborhood remains a cindery reminder of what it had once been.

In all, the New York City Fire Department counted 94 fires related to the storm. Nothing, though, approached the monster that visited Breezy Point. The Fire Department has not yet finished its investigation into the blaze. However, Robert Byrnes, the chief fire marshal, said that it had concluded that floodwaters caused something electrical, like a socket or breaker panel, to short and ignite inside the unoccupied house at 173 Ocean Avenue, random as the spin of a wheel.

Breezy Point’s residents know grief, 30 people connected to the community having perished in the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet the miracle of the torrid fire is that no one died or was seriously injured. The fire chose property and spared life.

A Threatening Light

The man unnervingly close to its origin, who saw it all, had been sleeping. Glenn Serafin, 62, is a media broker who lives in Tampa, Fla. But an 80th birthday party for his aunt in Totowa, N.J., on the Saturday before the storm, brought him north. After the party he and his wife, Josephine, drove to the two-story clapboard house they have owned for nine years in Breezy Point.

It stood on Atlantic Walk in the area known as the Wedge, implying its tapered shape, where houses practically overlap. Streets do not exist in the Wedge, only sidewalks and sand alleys for sanitation trucks and emergency vehicles. Those who live there leave their cars in common parking lots and transport their belongings in little wagons.

Long nicknamed the Irish Riviera, even as its population has become more ethnically diverse, Breezy Point is predominantly middle class and working class, home to numerous firefighters and police officers. Houses, some newer ones that stand with a certain hauteur and older ones dating back 70 or 80 years, are often passed down generations. It is a gated community, with its own security force, and residents belong to a cooperative association that owns the land. Originally the neighborhood was a summer retreat, but now its full-time population has swelled to over 60 percent. Not everyone holds flood insurance.

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