Coming Back

Two and half weeks after Irene swept through town like a notorious party girl leaving others to clean up her mess, downtown businesses are at different stages of recovery.

Some like and managed to the next day after working all day and bringing in lots of bottled water. Almost all the businesses on the ground level had some kind of clean up to do, with lots of , as well as expenses associated with the storm.

Some are still digging out and plan to open as soon as possible, but the time table varies from business to business.

The worst damage downtown occurred to those along the west branch of the Rahway River, which overflowed the canal causing the water to crash through the buildings closest to it and leaving those owners reeling.

Patch talked to some of the stores downtown that bore the brunt of the storm and will continue to bring you more stories as the recovery progresses:

: Tinga co-owner David Fishman, who also owns Tinga in Montclair and Westfield, laughed and then sighed when asked how Millburn’s Tinga is doing in the wake of Irene.

“Our Montclair store was unscathed, thank God, and our Westfield store lost electricity, but it was nothing on the scale of Millburn,” Fishman said. “Our basement was flooded to the ceiling, our front door burst open, our wood floor was ripped up and buckled so bad that the floor is now down to the beams You can stand and look down to the basement. We do a lot of prep work in the basement and there is nothing left down there. It’s a shell.”

Tinga’s office was in the basement. There, “all the files were wiped out, along with the phone system and the invoices,” says Fishman. He called his vendors, emailed them pictures of the damage and said, “I had all your checks ready for you on the desk but the desk has floated away.” 

The storm left thousands of pounds of mud in Tinga’s basement. “Getting rid of water is one thing but everything is layered with a foot of mud and mud is incredibly heavy,” says Fishman. “We just finished sucking the mud out.”

Tinga’s landlord is taking responsibility for removing the mud and the mold. The good news is that Tinga’s tables and chairs weren’t damaged, and the kitchen equipment was not under water and still works. 

“Even the electric confection oven works, “ says Fishman. “Our concern is we have three big walks-in in the basement and the question is whether the compressors are salvageable.”

Replacing the compressors costs thousands of dollars.

Dealing with FEMA and state and local governments has been a challenge, Fishman says.  “One of the things that gives us pause is whether this is going to happen again. This is a totally preventable situation. It’s not as if the canal can’t handle the flow of water. The canal is blocked up and you have to eliminate the blockage points.”

He points out that New Jersey is losing sales tax from all businesses that haven’t been able to reopen their doors post-Irene. “We’re not paying sales tax in New Jersey right now so the (state is) losing thousands of dollars from us,” says Fishman.

Fishman plans to reopen Tinga within three to four weeks and wants loyal patrons to know that longtime waiters, Karim Rios and Raydi Mora, who have been helping with the cleanup, will be there when the restaurant reopens.

“Our waiters have a nice following, they’ve been here for seven or eight years and customers know them. We’ve had a lot of messages on Facebook, from customers wishing us well.  We’d like to thank them. That’s what being a restaurant in a town like this is all about.”

: At the home furnishings and accessories store Curate, owners Debra Camitta and Mary Litterman were closed for vacation when the storm hit. Camitta rushed back, examined the inventory by price point, then took the more expensive items and moved them to higher ground. She placed sandbags in front of the front and back doors. “But they didn’t do anything, as far as I can tell,” says Camitta.

Curate was flooded with several feet of standing water. Among the losses: Men’s leather wallets, cosmetic bags, pens, journals, several display pieces, a jewelry cabinet, the furnace, all the appliances and possibly the air conditioner.

“We lost everything on the ground that was two feet or lower,” says Litterman.

Curate owners hired a crew to rip down the bottom three feet of the walls, remove the floor and the plywood underneath the floor.

“Luckily, we’re going to reopen,” says Camitta.  “We saved a lot of merchandise but this is a huge undertaking, and you have to think, ‘If you’re in a flood zone, is there where you want to be?’ We don’t ever want to go through this again.” Still, she adds, “We’re only a year old. We’re going to try it one more time. We’re hoping we’ll be open in two to three weeks.”

At restaurant Basilico, the basement was under water, where “we lost everything,’ says owner Mario DeMarco. “This was worse than Hurricane Floyd.” Everything that was in the office was lost, but much of the kitchen equipment was salvageable and "can go back to life,” says DeMarco. “I don’t want people to think we were wiped out completely.”

A crew is sheet-rocking the walls, and DeMarco estimates the restaurant will re-open within ten days to two weeks. There are no plans to change the décor or the menu.

DeMarco’s wife, Julie Randazza, who owns on Main Street, is getting ready to pick the paint colors for Basilico. Millburn Florist had two feet of water in their basement and lost glass vases, centerpiece stands, and cardboard boxes, but other than that, “No real damage,” says Randazza. “We were very lucky.”

Kitchen Expressions: The water that came through the Kitchen Expressions showroom was 18 to 21 inches high, says owner Steven Naphtali.

“When you opened the door, the water came halfway up the cabinet displays,” says Naphtali. “It ruined our displays and office equipment. ” Before the storm hit, Nephtali had moved the computers up onto blocks, which, he said, “would have been fine for four to six inches of water, but not 21.” The flood also knocked out Kitchen Expressions’ HVAC system.

Naphtali, who also owns the 10,000 square foot showroom Manhattan Center for Kitchen & Bath in New York, has relocated Kitchen Expressions to an office across from Jade Lake Gourmet. He says business in town proceeds as usual.

"We’re offering complimentary in-home evaluations and estimates and I’m happy to go to people’s homes,” says Naphtali. “We’re getting everything squared away.”

: At Buncher’s, the storm brought six feet of water into the basement, says owner/manager Marlene Hawes. The store lost fertilizer, grass seed, light bulbs, potting soil, sharpening equipment, tools, cleaning supplies, concrete mix, mortar mix, and sand. The forklift and front end loader were half under water, but not enough to do serious damage, says Hawes.

 “We had a good sized dead fish in the garage, it was maybe 5 to 6 inches long and it was dead. (My son) David came out with it on a shovel and asked me if I wanted lunch,” Hawes laughs. “You have to have some laughter. We found a load of towels from Tinga in our garage. They floated out. It was like an ocean. You could put a rowboat outside.”

After Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Buncher’s replaced its old front wooden doors with sealed metal doors, and in anticipation of Irene, Hawes and her family lay down what she calls, “water hogs,” big rugs that absorbed a lot of the water at the front of the store. As a result, Buncher’s was able to open its doors at 7 a.m., the morning after the storm.

“We never closed,” says Hawes. “People were jumping over the mud to get cleaning supplies and batteries. They were coming for wet vacs, humidifiers and box fans. The store was a mess but an orderly mess. We were working 16-hour days. I couldn’t get stock fast enough to help people.”

: The Milburn Deli lost almost all of food stock in the basement and on the first floor, as well as equipment, but now, “we’re back to normal,” says Ron Fluke, one of the deli’s three owners. For three days, the deli had 24 people working round the clock and reopened on Thursday morning, four days after the storm.

“We could have opened on Wednesday but the Board of Health had to inspect us and they were busy,” says Fluke.

The current owners of the deli marked their 20th anniversary in Millburn on August 9. “We went through (Hurricane) Floyd, so we were prepared ahead of time," says Fluke. “But this was much worse than Floyd. We arranged for dumpsters ahead of time. We had the furnace and refrigeration guy lined up and the supply guys lined up. But water finds its way in. Every day gets a little better. We’re very glad to be back.”

Editor's Note: Patch will continue to write stories about the recovery efforts.