No washing away these memories

RISING PRESSURE: Shanix Technology Inc. experienced $1.4 million in damage during the March 2010 floods. Like many 
companies hit hardest, Shanix did not have flood insurance and had to tap its own resources to recover. /
RISING PRESSURE: Shanix Technology Inc. experienced $1.4 million in damage during the March 2010 floods. Like many companies hit hardest, Shanix did not have flood insurance and had to tap its own resources to recover. /

Ron Nunes must look only across his construction yard to see the remains of the March 2010 floods. Intermingled with the trees and brush by the Pawtuxet River lie swing sets, bundles of lumber and other debris swept away by the river that raged a year ago.
Nearby, inside the offices of R.T. Nunes and Sons, office workers still labor to peel apart paper records soaked by water from the river that reached as high as 2 feet in the building. His office was ruined, his stockpiles of construction materials outside washed away. The financial toll stands at $200,000, and rising.
“I’m still picking up the pieces,” Nunes said recently.
The memory of the flooding may have receded in the minds of many Rhode Islanders. But the effects of the downpour in late March 2010 – after an earlier storm that month – are still fresh for businesses struck by floods that shut down Interstate 95, temporarily closed the Warwick Mall, forced the deployment of the R.I. National Guard and caused what then-Gov. Donald L. Carcieri estimated at tens of millions dollars in damage.
Major flooding occurred along the Blackstone River in northern Rhode Island, the Pawcatuck River in the southwestern corner of the state and the Pawtuxet River that cuts through the state’s densely populated urban core.
Pictures of the flooding bring back painful memories for Kate Smith, co-owner of Kalastyle, a Cranston-based soap distributor flooded when the Pawtuxet rose to 20.7 feet, more than double the flood-stage level.
The rushing waters sent pallets of goods weighing hundreds of pounds zooming around the first floor. Industrial shelving fell like dominos, and dirty water swamped stocks of goods. In a storage closet, Smith’s only pictures of her deceased father and photos of her children as babies became soggy pieces of worthless paper.
In the end, the water caused $91,000 in damage to the building and destroyed $243,000 in inventory. It could take years, Smith said, to recover from the financial hit.
“You really find out when something like that hits what you’re made of and who your friends are,” she said.
When the water finally receded, it left behind raw sewage that settled and caked into lumps. A year later, Smith and her employees still find small cakes of sludge that escaped the cleanup launched after the flood. Those recovery efforts took about two weeks of almost round-the-clock efforts by Smith and her employees. Nunes and his staff took about five months to restore normal operations. They were among the lucky ones.
The R.I. Department of Labor says 18 companies in the state closed for good because of the floods. That put about 270 people out of work in a state already suffering from stubbornly high unemployment. As of early March another three, employing some 359 people, were still working to reopen, the department said.
Across the state, the floods affected at one time or another at least 3,238 employees, the department said. The lion’s share of them worked at the Warwick Mall, where waters from the Pawtuxet reached as high as 20 inches. Mall co-owner Aram Garabedian estimates the floods caused between $80 million and $100 million in damage.
The mall took a year to fully recover, with the last anchor store, Macy’s, finally reopening March 15. Garabedian said most of the stores returned, but about 10 never reopened. Some, he said, stood on shaky financial ground before the flood and took advantage of a clause in their leases that allowed an early exit after a disaster. Others, like Chelo’s Hometown Bar and Grille, said rebuilding would prove too costly.
On the bright side, the floods forced a wholesale rehabilitation of the mall that celebrates its 40th anniversary in October. Some retailers built cutting-edge, prototype stores, and in the common areas workers laid new tile, installed comfort stations with benches and repaired the mall’s trademark carousel.
“The new mall, in my opinion, is so much stronger in presentation,” Garabedian said.
Garabedian also counts himself lucky that the mall had flood insurance. Businesses without flood insurance found themselves reaching deep into their aptly named rainy day funds or relying on their owners to reach into their own pockets.
At Shanix Technology Inc., founder and President Kekin Shah did both to help pay for the roughly $1.4 million in damages caused by the Pawtuxet River racing through his offices.
The costs of rebuilding mounted as Shanix set up shop in a temporary office and then moved to another as it sought to rebuild its Cranston headquarters packed with pricy technology. Ultimately, a Michigan-based contractor sent away four tractor-trailer loads of debris, much of it laden with sewage from the nearby sewer plants that overflowed. With a mix of pride and bitterness, Shah said Shanix organized the recovery on its own and received little outside financial help. His insurance carrier refused to pay for most of the damages because his policy failed to cover flooding.
Shah also found out, much to his surprise, that the U.S. government offers little direct assistance to businesses underwater. The Federal Emergency Management Agency sent more than 300 workers to assist in disaster relief. But its aid went only to homeowners, municipalities and the state.
The U.S. Small Business Administration offered disaster loans to businesses, but Shah, Smith and other business owners bitterly complained about the laborious paperwork process and were reluctant to take on new debt.
“The actual disaster loans from the SBA, I wanted to kill myself, they were so awful,” said Smith, who ended up securing a loan through a local bank backed by the agency.
Across the state, the SBA said it approved 173 disaster loans for Rhode Island businesses totaling $12.8 million. Another six loans totaling $97,900 covered economic losses incurred because of the flood.
The agency made a larger monetary impact with homeowners, approving 1,691 disaster home loans totaling $32.9 million.
Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved 14,743 individual assistance applications to residents totaling $37 million.
It provided another $16.3 million to public entities picking up after the flood. That number could rise. State and local agencies continue to ask FEMA to pay for repairs to their infrastructure.
As of the end of February, the R.I. Department of Transportation had tallied $29.9 million in damage. It expects the federal government to cover $24.4 million in a series of installments. The state must pick up the balance.
In Cranston, Jerry Cordy, the deputy director of administration, spends half his time completing flood-related paperwork, much of it for the federal government. Cordy and Mayor Allan Fung say resolving all the consequences of the flood likely will take years.
“It hasn’t been easy going through the morass of paperwork,” Fung said.
The city is seeking more than $14 million in state and federal money to conduct flood-hazard mitigation projects, buy out chronically flooded homes and study improvements to its sewage system. Officials in neighboring Warwick are working on similar initiatives, Mayor Scott Avedisian said. Warwick also continues to sift through requests from flood-affected businesses for tax breaks. City officials also are exploring ways to send emergency messages to property owners after discovering that its reverse-911 system worked well, except for businesses with phones literally underwater.
Fung and Avedisian also want to send messages that their cities are open for business. Fung said Cranston must start long-term flood-prevention projects to soothe fears of business owners.
“If they don’t come back then there are less jobs out there,” Fung said, although he did add that city officials are aware of only one business that permanently left the city after the floods.
Especially in Cranston and Warwick, local officials are re-evaluating their sewage systems. The Cranston plant experienced some flooding while the entire Warwick plant flooded under 6 feet of water. In Warwick, Avedisian pleaded with people not to flush their toilets.
“I don’t care how much training you go through, I don’t think anything prepares you to get up and make that kind of statement,” Avedisian said recently.
Besides the Warwick and Cranston plants, the sewage-treatment plant in West Warwick also experienced flooding, so too the one in Westerly. Combined, the four spilled 60 million to 88 million gallons of raw sewage into nearby waters, said Bill Patenaude, a principal engineer with the office of water resources at the R.I. Department of Environmental Management.
The environment though, recovered, said John Torgan, baykeeper at Save The Bay.
“In some respects we are better off as a result of the flood. We built tremendous public awareness of the issues around the flooding hazard and what can be done to prevent and better manage and plan for flooding and sea-level rise,” Torgan said.
But for some, their options are limited. Nunes, the owner of the construction company, said leaving his riverfront property appears impossible. He could only afford to purchase a new property by selling his existing land.
“Who is going to buy it now with its history?” Nunes said. “It’s a quagmire now.” •

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