For many on the East Coast, life has come to a halt while they sort out the mess left behind by Hurricane Sandy. According to various media reports, at least 55 people died because of the storm, millions of others remain without power and municipalities and property owners must now figure out how to recover from the roughly $20 billion in property damage.
A view out the back of a New Jersey Army National Guard M35 2½ ton cargo truck conducting relief operations on Monday in Atlantic City, N.J. Photo courtesy of New Jersey Army National Guard.
Gary Horvath, owner of ATC Hardwood Flooring Inc. (Bergenfield, N.J.), said he called his customers Sunday evening to tell them he would have to put their jobs on hold for the time being; he also let his employees know they would not be working Monday. He awoke Monday morning second-guessing his decisions. "I thought, maybe we could have done a half day?" he told Hardwood Floors on Tuesday afternoon. But the storm, which originated in the Caribbean around Oct. 19 and moved north to graze Florida on Friday, had been gathering force. "By 2 o'clock [on Monday], I knew that I made the right decision," he said.
Kevin O'Leary, owner at KO Floor Supply LLC (Riverdale, N.J.), which is about 30 miles inland from Bergenfield, closed his shop early on Monday afternoon. Before closing up, he took a number of measures to prepare for the storm's aftermath, including fueling his delivery trucks, hooking up a backup generator for his computer system and pre-printing credit card forms in anticipation of Internet outages in the following days.
With the hurricane raging Monday evening, Horvath and his wife, Lisa Horvath, sought shelter at their home in Bergen County, N.J. "It was like 4th of July with all the [electrical] transformers blowin' up," Horvath said. "The sky was orange, purple, green and blue, and these transformers were just igniting around us." The couple's worst fear was that nearby trees would fall on their home. "We were keeping our eyes on our neighbors' trees, one in the front, one in the back," he said. "If they would have fell in the right direction they would have killed us, but they didn't fall. The trees that did fall were taken out right by the roots, tearing up the sidewalk and the street."
Fallen trees killed several as Hurricane Sandy pummeled the East Coast. Here, members of the Pennsylvania National Guard clean up debris near Fort Indiantown Gap, Penn. Photo courtesy of Pennsylvania National Guard.
Horvath and his wife woke early Tuesday morning to attempt to survey the damage; again, they informed their employees they would not be working that day. All around they saw closed roads and flooded or completely destroyed homes. They saw train cars had washed onto the New Jersey Turnpike. "We were rockin' and rollin' here, getting minimum 50-90 mile-an-hour wind gusts," Horvath said, looking back on the storm. "There's been huge, huge devastation ... It was intense all day and all night." At the couple's reclaimed wood business, Irvington, N.J.-based Real Antique Wood, the tin roof had been rolled back like an old tin can. "The structure is fine, and all of our piles of wood, but it looked like someone was trying to peel back the tin on the roof," Horvath said.
A boat rests on railroad tracks near the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Ossining station. Photo courtesy of MTA.
O'Leary's shop lost power Tuesday morning at about 4 a.m. and then regained power at about noon. He kept the shop closed that day, as well.
Today the Horvaths, along with other wood flooring businesses and millions of East Coast residents, remain at the mercy of emergency teams and power companies. Most of the jobs they have lined up right now are without power; they can't get to the other jobs due to impassable roads. The best they can do is take things one day at a time. Luckily, their customers completely understand their wood flooring work is on hold. "They were already anticipating it; a lot of them had generators." Horvath said. "They were OK with not working; nobody had an attitude. Everybody was definitely understanding."
O'Leary, on the other hand, re-opened his shop Wednesday morning. "All is well at KO Floor Supply, and most importantly all employees and family members are safe," he said.
For more details on Sandy's aftermath, see these reports:
