SBA a partner for businesses hit by disaster

When the Blackstone River overflowed its banks in October 2005 during one of the worst rainstorms in almost a century, the rampaging waters took as its victims two boats that the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council relies on to provide visitors with scenic jaunts along the river, a service that is a key fund-raising mechanism for the group.

Robert D. Billington, executive director of the BVTC, called that storm “about as bad a flood as you could find in 100 years” and remembered how the Blackstone Valley section of Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts was caught unaware, far from prepared to cope with the deluge.

“We lost half of our landing system at the docks and we suffered about $75,000 worth of damage to the ‘Explorer’ and the ‘Samuel Slater,’” Billington said, referring to the two boats by name.

Fortunately, the Rhode Island district office of the U.S. Small Business Administration was able to help the tourism council by providing a loan to repair the boats. “It’s going to take 20 years for us to pay that off,” Billington said, but he’s happy to have received the loan.

However, much of the docks, which the tourism council had spent 12 years building on the Central Falls waterfront, are gone. Billington said the docks suffered at least $100,000 worth of damage and, since there was no way BVTC could cover such a loss, “we have less docks now.”

Perhaps no one ever can be ready for such a disaster, but the SBA and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. have teamed up to help small businesses and nonprofits such as BVTC better prepare for severe weather emergencies, including floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and wildfires.

In December the SBA and Nationwide published a basic 12-page guide, “Be smart, prepare your business for disaster,” which is available on the Web sites of both, a href="http://www.sba.gov">www.sba.gov and a href="http://www.nationwide.com">www.nationwide.com. (READ MORE)

Noting that 25 percent of the businesses that close due to a weather disaster never re-open, Bill Windsor, Nationwide’s associate vice president of safety in Columbus, Ohio, said that the company’s goal was to produce a guide “simple enough so the average business owner could digest it and hopefully take some steps to mitigate the risk.”

When disaster strikes, “we become the nation’s banker,” said Normand T. Deragon, public information officer for the SBA in Rhode Island, who explained the types of assistance his agency provides to businesses, homeowners, property owners and nonprofits, including renters.

The SBA offers “low-interest, long-term loans” – no grants — of up to $40,000 for personal property, such as household valuables, antiques and automobiles, and up to $200,000 “to repair or restore” real estate to its former state, according to Deragon.

Personnel from the SBA will conduct a damage assessment, as an insurance company would do, and decide on the size of the loan, “depending on your assets and insurance,” he said. “How much you get depends on what other resources you have.”

He recalled that after Katrina, the SBA was inundated with almost 500,000 loan applications –

and the agency only has about 3,000 total employees nationwide. “It was overwhelming,” he said. Even the six-member Providence office was called upon to help resolve the New Orleans mess.

In the Blackstone Valley, where the river runs 45 miles from Worcester downstream to Providence, Billington said the October 2005 flood made it clear that the valley was in “critical” need of a system to warn those in both states of any future weather disaster affecting the river.

Working with the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, the tourism council created a system to notify those with riverside property interests of a potential disaster.

Called the “Blackstone Alert,” the system sends 400 to 500 e-mail messages to businesses and homeowners along the river, urging them to monitor water levels and linking them to about 10 Web sites carrying official weather information. The tourism council sends out an alert when notified by Rhode Island emergency management officials of possible flooding.

The Blackstone Alert has been used five times since the 2005 flood. •