( Ed.'s note: The following letter was sent to Tom Tiernan at the Town of North Hempstead Highway Department and printed here at the writer's request.)

I want to take this time to express my thanks to you and your crew for their quick work on Sept. 18 and 19 after a town tree fell on my house. Hurricane Isabel may have generally been a dud of a storm for Long Island, but for my neighborhood it meant another blackout (23 1/2 hours) after a very large tree took out two power/telephone poles. The tree fell at 6 pm on the 18. By 10 p.m., your crew had it cut off the tops of our houses (mine and an adjoining neighbor), the power had been safely cut off. The next morning your crew was back at the crack of dawn and by 10 a.m. they had the entire area so clean that you would never have known that a tree had even fallen.

Nancy Coleman