Memories, not house, preserved

Plum Island home razed after erosion

Geri Buzzotta lost her home and all her valuables.

NEWBURY - On the eve of Thanksgiving, as most people prepared for family feasts, 79-year-old Geri Buzzotta lost her home and all her valuables, including her wedding band.

That is because the Atlantic Ocean finally won. Buzzotta's white, two-story beach house, precariously perched on the fast-eroding shores of Plum Island, was declared unsafe yesterday and demolished.

There was little warning. No time for Buzzotta to collect photos, clothes, or all the Thanksgiving goodies she had baked earlier in the week at 16R Northern Boulevard.

"That's all gone," the petite grandmother of eight said wistfully yesterday. "Everything is gone."

Despite the suddenness of Buzzotta's evacuation, residents of the island have been battling erosion for years, fearing that a storm could cause a major breach that could flood the northern tip of the island, stranding hundreds of homes.

State officials at the Department of Environmental Protection have said they are working on long-term solutions to the problem, but local leaders and residents say they are moving too slowly.

On Tuesday, sudden erosion brought by a storm coming off the Atlantic took a new toll. Buzzotta said she was in bed Tuesday night when her grandson, who was staying over, came to her worried by the sound of cracking and banging underfoot.

Buzzotta tried to reassure him, saying she had weathered many storms in the house.

"He said: 'No, grandma, I hear it under my feet. And I think we need to get out of here.' "

Buzzotta left with her grandson, her pet Chihuahua Oliver, and the nightgown she was wearing. A neighbor later gave her clothes.

When she returned to the house yesterday morning, it was blocked off by yellow caution tape, and neither she nor anyone in her family was allowed inside. Michael Reilly, Newbury's police chief and emergency management director, said the center support beams under the house had collapsed.

"It's the Atlantic Ocean," Reilly said. "If it wants to take something, it's going to take it. . . . It's heart-wrenching."

For hours, local and state officials deliberated over how to bring the house down before high tide without scattering debris or hurting the environment. Shortly before 5 p.m., an excavator reduced the massive house to rubble. Reilly said after workers removed some deck pilings, all it took was "a nudge" before the house collapsed.

"Sam, I thank you honey," Buzzotta said to the town's building commissioner, Sam Joslin, who made the call to demolish the house. He hugged her after it came down.

"It's a sad day for the island," said Marc Sarkady, who lives nearby on Northern Boulevard, as he looked at the house in the moments before it came down.

Sarkady - president of the Plum Island Foundation, which works to control erosion - said neighbors have been frustrated by what they perceive as slow or insufficient action by state and federal officials to prevent erosion to the Atlantic face of the island. The town, with state approval and funding, recently began installing sand bags nearly 30 feet long and 5 feet high, in stacks three or four high, along 500 feet of shoreline.

Residents wanted the project to begin early this fall, but it did not start until this month, because of approval delays at the state level, Sarkady said.

"It's my view that if the sand tubes had been in, we might have been able to prevent this" destruction, he said.

Buzzotta's house was set back on Northern Boulevard, at greater risk of being swallowed by the sea than its neighbors. Other houses are not in immediate danger, neighbors and local officials said, but some residents said they want to see increased action at the local, state, and federal level, including repairs to jetties to the north.

Buzzotta said she and her late husband bought the property 43 years ago, when it was a condemned shack. Her husband, Mario, a former Winchester police lieutenant, turned it into a comfortable year-round home. He died two years ago.

"I wonder if my husband is looking down; this was his dream," Buzzotta said yesterday, moments before the demolition.

Buzzotta, who had voiced anger and frustration earlier in the day, appeared almost serene, clutching her dog, when the house finally came down. Family members and friends looked grief-stricken.

Butch Peak, Buzzotta's son-in-law, said the family had written letters to state and federal officials trying to get help for Buzzotta and the island.

"The only thing she wanted was this place," he said.