Fire Island Is Relieved, but More Vulnerable, After Hurricane Sandy FIRE ISLAND, N.Y. - Dawn and David Cloutier knew the damage to their weekend house was bad when they spotted their teakettle, blocks away, in a ball field near the bay. Then they saw their outdoor shower enclosure wedged against a neighbor's house, and finally, their living room sofa, under some pines in their backyard. "The good thing is that we always wanted a tree in the living room," Mr. Cloutier said last week, mustering some black humor as he visited the house, in the island's Ocean Bay Park section, for the first time since Hurricane Sandy hit. Now we have our living room under the tree. Initial reports of the storm's impact on Fire Island were dire. And while it did breach the 32-mile island in two places, flood many of the 17 communities - during the storm, the bay and the ocean met, subsuming much of the island under feet of water - and ruin dozens of oceanfront houses, the verdict now is that it could have been far worse. Unlike many of the hardest-hit areas, Fire Island had a robust system of dunes, ranging from 10 to 20 feet in height, that largely absorbed the ocean's wrath, saving the bulk of the island's 4,500 homes. The dunes were replenished only a few years ago, after many residents agreed to accept a new tax to help finance the work. Now the dunes are gone. "The dunes served their purpose," said Steven Jaffe, president of the Ocean Bay Park Association, one of the homeowner groups on the island. But they were decimated, and now we have a winter coming and we don't know what will happen. Fearful of facing the next big storm without the protection of the dunes, some community associations are already reviving them, filling government-sanctioned bags, known as Geocubes, with sand, and building a tight wall where the dunes once stood. They are also scooping up the mounds of sand that washed onto walkways - the island is known for its paths and red wagons where others have roads and cars - and returning it to the dunes. But it will take the Army Corps of Engineers and federal money, residents say, to bring them all the way back to where they were. As they follow the debate that has erupted over the wisdom of rebuilding on storm-lashed beaches, community leaders are making the case that Fire Island is critical to Long Island's welfare. They cite one study suggesting that the island, with only a few thousand homes, and 200 year-round families, protects a stretch of the mainland with 13,000 homes and properties, valued at roughly $10 billion. "We're the first line of defense for Long Island, and the dunes are our first line of defense," said Suzy Goldhirsch, president of the Fire Island Association, an umbrella group of community associations. We're self-reliant. We're island people. But we need support. We won't ask for more than anyone else, but we don't want to be forgotten. About three-fourths of the island is undeveloped, including an eight-mile stretch of federal wilderness that is part of the Fire Island National Seashore. The dune system there was taller, with hills as high as 30 feet, and significantly wider than that of the residential areas. There were primary dunes and secondary dunes, with a dip in between. Chris Soller, superintendent of the Fire Island National Seashore, said the storm strafed a portion of the primary dunes, and 75 feet of depth were lost. The National Park Service, which oversees the seashore, will allow time and the tides to do their work on the federal lands and eventually rebuild the dunes. "We still have a lot of dune system left," he said. This is a storm that basically shifted the island. Maybe the dune line will not be in the same location, but we need to listen to nature. The breaches that the storm dug across the island are another matter. Each was in a nonresidential area. One bisected Smith Point County Park, toward Fire Island's eastern end, and on Monday, the Corps of Engineers began the process of filling it back in with dredged sand. The Park Service is taking a wait-and-see approach to the other breach, at Old Inlet, which has opened and closed on its own in the past. "We will evaluate it to see if it closes on its own," Mr. Soller said Friday. It is starting to fill in. It could take weeks or months. There's a sense that there shouldn't be any new inlets. On Monday, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York called for the quick repair of the breach, saying it put the mainland at greater risk of flooding. The communities that sustained the most damage were Atlantique, Davis Park and Ocean Bay Park. Part of the challenge for Fire Island's private communities after the storm was the availability of labor, given the tiny off-season population of the island. With an evacuation order in place until recently, the restorative work of cleaning debris, buttressing the dunes and providing fire protection (on an island whose very name evokes that risk) was especially difficult. In Ocean Beach, which has the island's largest concentration of businesses, a fire broke out in a home on Halloween. One homeowner constructed a crow's nest on top of the tallest building in the area, a throwback to the fire towers of a predigital age. It has been staffed 24 hours a day. Next door in Seaview, one year-round resident, Peter Brennan, a 48-year-old contractor, estimated that it would take at least six months to reconstruct his house, which was severely flooded and sustained damage to the electrical and heating systems. He plans to raise the pilings under the house from their current height of two feet to eight feet, noting that the houses on taller pilings were damaged the least. But his first concern, at this moment, is the well-being of his children. His wife and two sons are temporarily living in Bay Shore while he tends to the storm damage. "It's a huge disruption in everyone's lives," he said. One of our sons spoke to his school psychologist. He was afraid I would get hurt. I told him we're all wearing helmets.