Long Island and New England Prepare for Rare Hurricane Strike

As Hurricane Henri churned up the East Coast on Saturday, communities from New York City to Boston prepared for what would be the first hurricane to make landfall on Long Island or in New England in at least 30 years.

The governor of Massachusetts activated members of the National Guard to make high-water rescues and clear debris. New York City announced it would suspend outdoor dining and close beaches for swimming. And Connecticut power companies said downed trees might leave hundreds of thousands of customers without electricity for as long as three weeks.

Henri was projected to make landfall on Long Island or in southern New England as a Category 1 hurricane or a strong tropical storm by midday Sunday. When a concert in Central Park celebrating New York’s emergence from the pandemic was halted because of lightning around 7:30 p.m., it was clear that the storm’s outer bands had arrived.

People still scrambled to prepare, with the Suffolk County executive, Steven Bellone, calling on visitors and residents of Fire Island, a narrow barrier island off the southern shore of Long Island, to voluntarily evacuate.

“If they do not leave the island today, they will be stuck,” he warned.

On the eastern end of Long Island, Southampton planned to issue a voluntary evacuation order affecting 6,000 people, said the town supervisor, Jay Schneiderman, who expected other towns in the Hamptons to follow Southampton’s lead.

Christine Oakland-Hill, the owner of Oakland’s Restaurant & Marina in Hampton Bays, worried about losing business during the peak of tourist season, as Labor Day approaches. The road to the restaurant was impassable for days after Hurricanes Sandy and Irene battered the area nearly a decade ago.

“It’s quite emotional — this is our livelihood,” she said.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, on one of his final days in office, said at a news conference that the evolving forecasts — it looked earlier as if Henri might hit the Boston area more directly — meant there was less time for officials and residents to prepare.

“I understand we didn’t have the buildup that we had with Superstorm Sandy,” Mr. Cuomo said of the 2012 storm, noting that New Yorkers have had only a day of warnings. “Don’t be deceived by that. It’s because the trajectory of the storm changed.”

The governor said that New Yorkers should expect flight cancellations and that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was preparing to cancel some Long Island Rail Road service by midnight on Saturday. Amtrak announced that service between New York and Boston and between New Haven, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., would be canceled on Sunday.

Officials warned of possible dangerous storm surges in parts of the Bronx and northern Queens, and Mayor Bill de Blasio urged residents to postpone other unnecessary travel. “I’m telling all New Yorkers: Stay home tomorrow,” he said.

Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut said the state was monitoring nursing homes in case evacuations were needed. With eight inches of rain possible, the coastal towns of New Haven, Branford, Guilford and Groton recommended that residents on streets closest to the water voluntarily evacuate.

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Tropical Storm Isaias caught Connecticut power companies by surprise last year. They did not have enough restoration or tree crews mobilized, leaving the state nearly paralyzed for more than a week. About 750,000 customers lost power in Connecticut during that storm, along with 600,000 outages on Long Island.

When it looked more likely that Henri would directly hit New England, customers bought all of the kerosene lamps at Adler’s Design Center & Hardware in Providence, R.I., before moving on to flashlights and candles, said Leanne Dolloff, a cashier.

But even then, many longtime residents of the region were skeptical that the storm would be too disruptive.

“We’re New Englanders — we can handle it,” said Ms. Dolloff, 40, who remembers waking up to a floating bed in her Lowell, Mass., home when Hurricane Gloria — the last hurricane to make landfall on Long Island — swept through in 1985.

Gloria was a Category 1 storm when it hit Long Island, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate, bringing down thousands of trees and leaving 1.5 million homes without power.

Six years later, Hurricane Bob tore its way up the East Coast, making landfall as a Category 2 storm that left millions affected by downed trees, power outages and flooding. More than a dozen people died in each storm.

Bill Shore, a longtime resident of Newport, R.I., remembers the terror he felt during Bob. After driving to New Jersey to secure a boat, he frantically drove back to save his house.

“Limbs were coming down,” he said, “but I made it back without getting clobbered.”

Mr. Shore, however, said he was not too worried about Henri. He has a generator at home and planned to keep his 30-foot sailboat in the water, although he was thinking about renting a chain saw to tidy up after the storm.

In Boston’s Seaport District, which was built on the mud flats and salt marshes along Boston Harbor in the decades after Bob, bars and restaurants like Harpoon, Legal Sea Foods and Yankee Lobster had not made plans to close for Henri. Farther east, in the Cape Cod community of Buzzards Bay, boats were being removed from the marina, but little was being done to secure gas grills or deck chairs.

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The storm is forecast to move into Maine early Tuesday, but some early precautions were being taken. In York, at the state’s southern tip, an assistant harbormaster arranged for boats moored near the harbor entrance to move to more protected waters. Two dinghies sank at the town dock, he said, during the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred this past week.

Henri was expected to flood many areas already inundated by Fred.

In a swath of southeastern New York that was hit by Hurricane Irene in 2011, including the Catskill Mountains, small tributaries could again be filled and larger rivers could rise past their banks. In Boston, officials said they were building barriers around the city’s most vulnerable subway station and would suspend some transit services on Sunday.

Massachusetts experienced heavy rains on Thursday that required emergency workers to retrieve people from cars caught in high water. When Tropical Storm Elsa traveled up the Northeast coast earlier in the summer, New York subway riders had to navigate waist-deep waters at some stations.

Hurricane Sandy flooded subway and highway tunnels in New York in 2012, knocking out power to much of Manhattan. But Sandy was a much larger storm, devastating an area from New Jersey to Connecticut, and its size drove a catastrophic surge of seawater into New York Harbor.

Henri is not expected to have the same impact, and passengers waiting to board the ferry from Boston to Provincetown on Friday night were cautiously optimistic that their plans would not be foiled.

Gary Livolsi said he had been through a lot of nor’easters and was content simply making sure the umbrellas and cushions had not been left on his patio.

“I’m hoping they’re overestimating it, as they often do,” said Susan Mahoney, who was off to spend the weekend in Provincetown but was fully prepared to stay longer if necessary. “I brought extra wine.”

Troy Closson reported from New York and Ellen Barry from Boston. Reporting was contributed by Sophie Kasakove, Michael Gold, Michael Levenson and Adam Sobel from New York, Kristin Hussey from Stamford, Conn., Colleen Cronin from Providence, R.I., Catherine McGloin from Boston, Beth Treffeisen from Dennis, Mass., and Murray Carpenter from Belfast, Maine.