Residents living in the cottages along Cedar Beach in Mt. Sinai are being told to pack up and head for higher ground by the Town of Brookhaven, which has issued a mandatory evacuation for the area.
Homes on the Cedar Beach peninsula are located on a flood plain that officials expect to be swamped in the event of Category 1 hurricane.
An elderly resident on Harbor Beach Road, Dale Barraclough, was being helped out of her house by relatives.
"We disconnected all the electric, have everything high up, pictures off the walls and emptied out the refrigerator," she said.
Barraclough's windows were boarded up and yard was cleared as she plans to head to Manhattan, where she will be staying with a friend.
"It's on 2nd Avenue by the river so that will probably be flooded too," she joked.
At Ralph's Fishing Station and Marina, workers are busy getting boats out of the water and onto the moorings.
"We’re trying to get out as many boats as we can," said Sue Corey, an owner at Ralph's. "If we don’t have the ones that we’ve promised out by 8 a.m. tomorrow we’re not going to be leaving obviously because we still have some boats to get out.
"I don’t know how many boats there are on this harbor but the logistics of getting every boat out before the storm are not good," she continued. "We’re just not promising too much."
Cousins Dominick and Enzo Lafaro sat by the docks, still waiting for one of their boats. The New Jersey residents said they have had boats on the North Shore for 25 years.
At the time, Dominick's was out, but he said he was told they were 40 boats behind, and the two were still waiting for Enzo's to be moored.
"I don’t know if it’s going to come out," Enzo Lafaro said. "The plan is to double up on the rope, secure the boat as best we can and hope for the best."
Rick Mertz, owner of Singleton's Seafood Shack on Cedar Beach, had not yet heard of the mandatory evacuation.
"They didn’t tell us about it yet but we had planned on closing tomorrow anyway," he said. We’re going to take down our tent, tie everything down that’s lose and hopefully when we get back everything will be here."
According to the latest forecast, Hurricane Irene.
Longwood High School in Middle Island for displaced families.
