Shoring Up Our Future

Businesses slowly recover after Sandy

Owners offer sage advice to prepare for the next ‘Big One

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Rolling River Day Camp sits on five acres along Mill River, which snakes through East Rockaway and Bay Park on the way to East Rockaway Channel. The river can be a friend. It forms an idyllic backdrop for a camp replete with swimming pools, playgrounds and ball fields. It can also be a foe. During a nor’easter in 2010, Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the river inundated much of the camp, wreaking havoc.

“We got annihilated three years in a row,” said Mark Goodman, the camp’s owner.

In total, the three storms caused more than a million dollars in damage to Rolling River. Roofs were ripped off buildings. Goodman would replace a roof one year only to have it blow off the next. In all, he redid 33 roofs.

Sandy, which slammed into the East Coast on Oct. 29, 2012, brought a 10-foot storm surge, submerging many of Goodman’s 10 structures. “The surge was so methodical that it took our docks and lifted them over the poles that are meant to hold them there. …. It was really a tough thing,” he said.
 
Build an emergency fund
After receiving state grant and insurance payments, Goodman was short $250,000, which came from his emergency fund. He estimated that he would need five years to replenish it.

Still, he said, he is choosing to look on the bright side. “The nice part, the place is brand new,” he said, referring to the camp, which was nearly entirely rebuilt. All electrical systems, pool pumps, heaters and air-conditioners were raised four feet off the ground to safeguard against possible future flooding.

“We were very lucky,” Goodman said. “It was a long, arduous, ridiculous deal, but we did get some help from New York Rising.”

The Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery established the NY Rising program in June 2013 to distribute more than $4 billion to business and homeowners as well as municipalities devastated by Sandy, Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, which hit in 2011.

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