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Brush Fire Turns Resort for Rich Into Disaster Area

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From Associated Press

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.

The fast-moving 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.

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“It’s like being in hell,” said volunteer firefighter L.J. Heming, 33, of Middle Island.

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, taking along a favorite picture of his wife in case the fire got to their home.

About 250 residents were ordered to evacuate from more dangerous areas.

The area was eerily quiet on Friday, when traffic jams of luxury cars normally would be headed to the island’s east end for the last weekend before the traditional Labor Day end to the summer resort season.

The smoke grounded the helicopters and private planes that ordinarily ferry in the wealthy. The Westhampton airport was shut, the Long Island Rail Road curtailed and many local roads--including part of the Sunrise Highway, the main link to the Hamptons--also were closed.

President Clinton dispatched Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt and other officials, experts and equipment.

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Gov. George Pataki and U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato toured the area. “It’s real scary stuff,” said Pataki, who had already declared a state of emergency.

In one bizarre tableau, a development of 20 Westhampton houses stood intact amid a totally burned out area. Firefighters had been able to split the fire, which raged on either side of the homes.

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