There's a more extensive gallery over at the Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society, on Facebook.
Joseph Geiman, the spokesman, commissioner and former chief of the Fire Island Pines Fire Department, said the blaze was initially fought in pitch blackness because the Long Island Power Authority “killed the grid, the same as they did for Hurricane Irene.”
“So when I arrived,” Mr. Geiman said, “there were five or six local responders working in the dark. Until we got our lights set up, the fire was the only source of illumination. And you could hear propane cylinders exploding one by one, almost like missiles flying out of nowhere. We call that bleve: boiling liquid expanding vapor explosives.”
Mr. Geiman, 57, a Pines summer resident for a decade, said the fire, not thought to be suspicious, had wiped out a business and night-life destination “that was the bread and butter of this community.”
