ORLEANS — Firefighters from several towns snuffed a brush fire in the woods behind Orleans Elementary School around 8:30 Tuesday morning. Alerted by a neighbor on Brewster Cross Road, firefighters acted quickly to contain the blaze, Fire Chief Geof Deering said. “With the dry conditions and the wind, we brought in as many personnel as we could from our department, as well as Eastham, Harwich and Brewster,” h...

ORLEANS — Notre Dame de Paris was built eight centuries ago by people who believed in miracles. Something like that happened last weekend, outside the cathedral’s charred ruins, when an international group of volunteer carpenters raised an oak truss created of the same materials and by the same methods as the roof supports lost in the blaze. “The main thing was showing the public that the cathedral can be re...

Positive Cases Trigger COVID Testing For Fire Department, Harbormaster Staff A student at Monomoy Regional High School has tested positive for COVID-19. According to Superintendent of Schools Scott Carpenter, school officials were notified of the positive test Friday night. The student does not appear to have contracted the virus at school, he said. Students and staff who were in close contact or in classro...

ORLEANS – The Governor Prence Inn on Route 6A, which did not open this season, could be acquired by the town for housing and other uses. Select Board Chair Kevin Galligan made the announcement at the board’s Sept. 16 meeting. Discussions over the last few months in executive sessions of the select board, affordable housing committee, and affordable housing trust have led to “a letter of interest that will prov...

CHATHAM — With peak summer visitor season in the rearview mirror, utility crews have returned to Route 28 in West Chatham to resume work on the roadway reconstruction project. Public Works Director Tom Temple told selectmen Tuesday that National Grid resumed work on Sept. 8 and aims to restore natural gas connections to 11 properties in the area by the end of the month. Verizon expects to complete its work b...

WEST HARWICH — The historic West Harwich Baptist Church is for sale. The church is considered a centerpiece of the West Harwich village. Next week, voters will be asked to put in place a zoning amendment to preserve the historic character of the stretch of Route 28 called Captain’s Row as part of a Barnstable County-designated District Of Critical Planning Concern. Pastor Jonathan Allen Cobb confirmed that ...

CHATHAM – If you use the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity app, you might have noticed some new alerts. Along with the familiar blue square with a white fin indicating a white shark sighting are new yellow boxes that when clicked, offer information on tagged sharks detected by real-time acoustic receivers. The new feature officially launched on Sept. 14, allowing users to access real-time detectio...

Education isn’t the only thing that’s gotten a makeover due to COVID-19. So too have high school and middle school sports in the Monomoy and Nauset regional school districts. While athletics will take place, it will be in a very new way with a number of new rules that include not only players and coaches, but spectators, as well. Under the Monomoy plan, which follows guidelines set forth by the Massachusetts I...

Pieter Schiller of North Chatham, Massachusetts, formerly of Concord, Massachusetts, passed away on Monday, September 7, 2020 in Boston at 82 years of age. Pieter was born on January 14, 1938 in Orange, New Jersey. He was the son of John and Helen Schiller of Maplewood, New Jersey. Pieter was married to Betty Schiller for 55 years. He attended Middlebury College in Vermont and graduated with a bachelor’s degree ...

EAST HARWICH - Walter J. Kane, 87,  of East Harwich died peacefully on September 12, 2020, surrounded by his loving family.  He was the beloved husband of Mary Louise (Greeley) Kane. They shared 62  years of marriage.  Walter was born in Somerville on December 6, 1932 to the late Walter J. and Pearl (Callan) Kane. He grew up in Arlington where he played high school football.  After the famous Pendleton shipwrec...

Elizabeth A. (Raggi) Nickerson-Power, 34, Hingham, MA Beloved Beth passed away August 12, 2020 at the Pat Roche Hospice House in Hingham, after a courageous four-year fight with cancer. Devoted wife of Michael E. Nickerson-Power, and brilliant mother of their precious daughter, Isadora Aubrie Nickerson-Power, Beth will be forever remembered in our hearts for her loving dedication to family, her intelligence pe...

CHATHAM – Friends of Chatham Waterways (FCW) Water Watchers recently completed their 21st season of collecting water samples and data for Chatham's Coastal Water Nutrient Monitoring Program. From 15 sampling stations in Chatham, 42 volunteers used refractometers to measure water salinity, Secchi disks to measure water depth, dissolved oxygen meters to record water temperature and dissolved oxygen levels, an...

CHATHAM – For the past several months, anyone who wanted a marriage license had to pass papers to the town clerk through an open window. New committee members have been sworn in on the steps of the town offices. Dropping off or picking up of plans, permits, tax payments and other documents at the annex has been done via a drop box, like spies passing clandestine documents in the night. That ends this week, whe...

CHATHAM — A week after state officials designated Chatham a “higher risk community” and marked it red on its pandemic map, a decline in the daily case rate has put the town back into the lowest-risk category.  Now marked gray on the map, Chatham's case rate is now listed at 4.9 cases per 100,000 residents, down from 8.5.  The new designation was released Wednesday as part of the state's weekly public health repor...

CHATHAM – “Sadly, we're cranking away.” Stephen Daniel, co-founder of the Chatham Coronavirus Impact Fund, was speaking about the continuation of the fund begun in April to help local residents under financial stress due to the pandemic. While there was no big spike after enhanced unemployment benefits ran out, there also hasn't been a significant drop in the amount of assistance the fund has been providing. ...