City Braces For Deluge

(Updated 11 p.m.) Tony Sacco hopes the sand dumped in his backyard Friday afternoon will save his house — and his brick pizza oven from Italy — from being swept away when Hurricane Irene hits shore this weekend.

Sacco, who’s best known as the owner of Tony and Lucille’s restaurant on Wooster Street, lives on a stretch of Townsend Avenue dangerously close to the water in Morris Cove. He said his prayers Friday as the city braced for Hurricane Irene, which is slated to hit land in New Haven on Sunday. The hurricane could be the largest storm to hit New Haven since 1985, when Hurricane Gloria hit Bridgeport as a Category 1 storm.

“We’re going to get hit bad,” predicted Sacco Friday, standing on his newly remodeled deck, which sits right on the harbor.

Nearby on the Morris Cove beach, city-hired contractors began Friday afternoon to push 500 cubic yards of sand in front of Sacco’s house and nine others that are already being ​“undermined” by high tides.

As of 11 p.m. Friday, state officials predicted the storm will hit New Haven on Sunday around 11 a.m. as a Category 1 hurricane. That’s the least severe hurricane rating. It means winds of 74 to 95 miles per hour and possible storm surge of 4 to 5 feet. After it hits Connecticut, the hurricane may downgrade to a tropical storm with winds lower than 74 miles per hour. Rain is set to begin at 8 p.m. Saturday, becoming heavy with tropical-force winds after midnight. Hurricane-force winds are set to hit Sunday at daybreak. Read the latest storm info here.

The governor has recommended that people in a flood-prone areas evacuate before 12 a.m. Sunday morning. The city will open two schools as emergency shelters: Click here for storm-preparation tips. Click here to learn about road closures and cancellations.

Crews from C.J. Fucci construction rolled onto Morris Cove Beach at 1 p.m. Friday. Kim Castiglione (pictured), who grew up at 90 Townsend Ave., returned there Friday to check in on her 77-year-old dad. She held the family dog, Vinny, as a payloader took another load of sand from the far end of the beach and dumped it at the doorstep.

She now lives North Haven, far from the soon-to-be-turbulent waters of the Long Island Sound.

“I feel bad for all the elderly people, the animals, whoever can’t help themselves,” she said.

Vinny, a longhaired mini-dachshund, will be just fine, reassured her dad, Robert Castiglione.

“Vinny’s tough. He’s a gangster,” Castiglione said. ​“He’s not afraid of anything.”

Castiglione has lived in the house for 70 years. He showed workers where sand is being cut away from beneath the cement foundation of what used to be a bathhouse.

“The house is undermining,” he said. The Castigliones lost 3 vertical feet of beach since 1992, when they last dug deeper to build a stronger wall.

Castiglione said he plans to rough out the storm in the house he moved into in 1942.

Reached Friday afternoon, Sacco said he plans to stay in the home where he and his wife Lucille have lived for 32 years.

“I ain’t going nowhere,” declared Sacco. ​“Where am I going to go?”

He said he’ll point his Chevrolet Avalanche facing out the driveway, so he can head out to the restaurant for food if need be.

Friday morning, Sacco paced on his newly rebuilt back deck, holding the wireless receiver of his home phone, which he was using to order new windows before the storm hits.

“We got two busted windows and the storm is going to take them right out. I know that,” Sacco said.

Sacco’s home sits in one of the parts of the city that’s most vulnerable to floods. A mapping tool created by the Nature Conservancy shows Sacco’s home inside the area of projected flooding that would be produced by a Category 2 storm. (The tool doesn’t have a scenario for a Category 1 storm.)

Sacco doesn’t need a map to tell him that. He lived through Hurricane Gloria in 1985, which sent sea water up to his windowsills. And he lived through a December blizzard that slammed the shoreline.

Sacco’s wood-fired brick pizza oven, made in 1984 in Amalfi, Italy, survived the storm. But the room where it’s kept — in an enclosed back porch — was flooded as waters pushed up against the house, causing a wall to cave and tearing away at the deck.

“We had a deck way out there,” Sacco said. ​“We lost all this from the storm in December. The blizzard took our beach away.”

The water caused the house’s foundation to crack, Sacco said.

When Tony and Lucille moved there 32 years ago, people would play volleyball on the beach outside his house, he said.

“This poor beach used to be beautiful,” Sacco said. ​“Now you need boots” to navigate the water, which laps up right under his back deck. He estimated he lost 25 feet of beachfront over the years.

Sacco said he ran into the mayor at Mayor’s Night Out in the East Shore this week and asked for help defending his house from the impending storm.

“We need help bad — very bad,” Sacco said.

He pointed Friday to his neighbor’s backyard, where high tides are undermining the house.

Then he looked out to the cove, where a light breeze grazed the surface of the water.

“This is the calm before the storm,” Sacco said.

Meanwhile, businesses and homeowners across town got ready for the tempest.

Midday Friday, Shaun Squier of E. Jennings & Son in North Haven screwed sheets of plywood into the windows of Ferrucci clothing shop and Del Monico’s hat shop on the corner of Elm and Orange streets downtown.

Shoppers cleared out the bottled water aisle at the Stop & Shop on Whalley Avenue, heeding official advice to stock one gallon of water per person per day, for three days.

Click here for tips on what to do before, during and after the storm. 

And stay tuned at the New Haven Independent for updates through the weekend.