Hammonasset Closed, Circle Beach Emptying Out

From one side of town to the other Friday, residents and visitors started packing up to leave ahead of Hurricane Irene, which as of Friday night was headed for the Connecticut shoreline.

Residents of shoreline areas were asked Friday afternoon by town officials, who declared a state of emergency, to leave or run the risk of getting caught in a storm surge. First Selectman Fillmore McPherson said he was concerned that there might be a loss of life if people did not heed instructions to leave.

He noted that advisory commissions at the federal and state level say that ambulance and fire apparatus should not be deployed if winds are in excess of 50 mph. As of 8 p.m. on Friday, Irene remained a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100 miles per hour.

"If you need help, there isn't going to be anybody"

"So when we tell you to leave, if you don't leave and come 3 a.m. and decide gee, the roads are flooded and you can't get your car out and you need help, there isn't going to be anybody," McPherson said. "It's very unlikely that personnel will be able to respond."

A shelter will be set up at the town gym off of Duck Hole Road, but McPherson cautioned that it will be spartan. "I'm sure most people would ratehr bunk in on someone's sofa," he said. The town gym is scheduled to open as a shelter Saturday afternoon, he said, shortly after the town hall offices at Town Campus are scheduled to open as the town's emergency operations center.

There are no plans to open the North Madison Congregational Church as a shelter beforehand, but it may be used afterwards if needed to house people who have lost their homes, he said.

Circle Beach deemed extremely vulnerable to flooding

Down at Circle Beach, deemed an area by the town that is extremely vulnerable by flooding, several visitors and residents didn't need to be asked twice.

Harmon Leete and his wife, Elizabeth "Betty" Leete have owned the trim cottage that says "Yawl Come" on the outside since 1939. "It survived the '38 hurricane," Leete said. But he had no plans to stick around and check out this one. "On, no, no," he said, clearly convinced that would be preposterous. "This area floods even at high tide."

At the other end of Circle Beach Road, Linda Boothroyd's family, who was visiting the same cottage in Madison for the third year, was getting ready to pack up and leave Saturday. It was their last day anyway. And Boothroyd said she was just grateful that it was such a beautiful day. "It's hard to believe a big storm is coming," she said. "But the waves were huge last night from another storm. My husband said he had no desire to stick around and see an even bigger storm."

"We expect it to be gone"

She said she'll be back next year and hopes her little cottage is still standing.

A few houses down, another resident said he had his doubts about that. His cottage has been in his family for about 35 years. "We've been in and out of the house a million times today emptying it out because we expect it to be gone," he said, adding that his family would be heading back to their year-round home Saturday.

Also Friday, campers and day-go visitors at Hammonasset were asked to leave, the campers by noon and the day visitors by sundown.

280 campers asked to leave

Friday morning, as dozens of cars approached the campsite registration office, staff members held up a sign reminding campers of the noon deadline.

About 280 campers had reserved spots for Friday night.

Park Supervisor John Hine said he did not know when the park would re-open.

“The park will be closed all day Sunday,” Hine said. “We’ll have to wait and see and assess any damage before the park can re-open. The state has moved quickly to make sure everyone is out of harm’s way.”

Refunds available

For information about the reopening of all the state parks, Hine suggests monitoring the Connecticut DEEP website, http://www.ct.gov/dep/site/default.asp

Anyone who had a reservation that was cancelled due to the storm can receive a refund through ReserveAmerica at http://www.reserveamerica.com or

1-877-668-CAMP (2267).

Despite the forced exodus, and concern on the part of park administrators about the impending storm, the atmosphere was jovial at the Hammonasset Beach State Park campground Friday afternoon. Children were cycling, skateboarding, and climbing in the playground. as their parents began the hours-long process of packing their recreational vehicles and cars.

"It's killing me to leave early"

“It’s killing me to leave early,” said Michelle Kiley of West Hartford, a third generation camper who has been coming to Hammonasset for decades and currently camps in a 1971 Airstream. “We were supposed to leave Monday. We’ll miss the last bingo game and the last movie.”

Kiley planned to head home either after dinner Saturday or first thing Sunday.

She said she expects it to take a total of three hours for her family to pack up the camping gear and secure it properly for the ride home. There were chairs, tables, a two-burner camp stove, a fire pit, tents, hurricane lamps, umbrellas and more.

Across the way, Donna Baker-Gilroy was preparing to leave and taking the hurricane warning very seriously.

"No water or electricity for a couple of weeks"

“I was here in 1955,” Baker-Gilroy recalls. “We lived in Waterbury and a hurricane caused the dams to break. There was no water or electricity for a couple of weeks and everyone had to get tetanus shots. Somehow, my mother’s trailer survived the storm and we lived in it. It was an old house trailer. The hurricane caused a 15-foot-wide channel to open up on the beach, there were boats in the trees and houses floated by.”

Baker-Gilroy said she will try to come back on Monday if the park is safe and open.

Hammo is the largest campground in the state with 554 sites and one of only two state parks on a beach (the other is Rocky Neck).