PROJECT INFO

TITLE: Recovering from Sandy

PUBLICATION: PestWorld Magazine, the official trade publication for the National Pest Management Association (NPMA)

DESCRIPTION: Feature article about Superstorm Sandy's impact on NY & NJ pest management companies

TESTIMONIAL

“I look forward to reading Amy’s assignments when I receive them. She has such a knack for interweaving facts, anecdotes and related content so that you don’t even realize you’re learning something as you’re reading it.”

–Janay Rickwalder, Editor of PestWorld

EXCERPT:

In late October 2012, residents across the Northeastern U.S. waited on bated breath as Hurricane Sandy raged across the Atlantic Ocean. By the time Sandy slammed ashore near Atlantic City on October 29, media outlets had dubbed the destructive cyclone “Superstorm Sandy.”

The vicious storm rewrote the record books, carving a path of destruction along the East Coast and claiming more than 100 lives. Sandy blacked out 8.1 million homes—power outages that affected people in 17 states, as far west as Michigan. To add to the turmoil, the costly storm caused a $25 billion loss in business activity, according to financial analysis firm IHS Global Insight. 

Of course, pest management companies in the area were not immune to Sandy’s physical and financial devastation. “It is difficult to determine the actual dollar loss we have had,” says Ryan Bradbury, President of Viking Termite & Pest Control, Inc. based in Bridgewater, New Jersey. “It is nearing $750,000 as we were unable to perform service work due to the inability to get gas for our vehicles.”

Painful Impacts

After Sandy plowed into the east coast, ravaging the region with major flooding, power outages and unfathomable structural damage, pest management companies certainly felt the crushing blow.

“We lost power on Monday night, October 29, when our power company Con Edison instituted a power grid shutdown in advance of the storm surge,” says Andrew Feldstein, VP of Operations of Assured Environments, a family owned pest management and extermination company based in New York City. Although power was restored to their building on October 31, Assured Environments had no Voice or Data service due to severe flooding in the Verizon Central Office in lower Manhattan.