Hoping to help minimize disruption to businesses in Florida and Georgia, the nation’s leading restoration and reconstruction company has tracked Hurricane Matthew’s projected path and moved significant resources into key staging areas.
Interstate Restoration, based in Ft. Worth, Texas, has spent the last several days shifting about 20 percent of its total national resources into the area, putting personnel and equipment as close to the storm’s red zone as safety will permit. Even so, Interstate Restoration CEO Stacy Mazur acknowledged that employees are traveling toward “ground zero” while hundreds of thousands flee in the opposite direction, causing serious hardship for those employees.
Clients began contacting Interstate Restoration well in advance of the storm, putting Interstate Restoration on notice about the possible need for roof replacement, water extraction, restoration of power and general structure repair. As Interstate employees and contractors begin the long process of recovery, they know they will face living and work conditions that compound the challenge.
“For at least a certain amount of time, we can anticipate that we will have to live and work without power and without the availability of basic things such as water, food and fuel for our vehicles,” said Mazur.
The employees will have to be self-sufficient, carrying their own water and food (MREs, or meals ready-to-eat). Their vehicles will carry spare fuel, and they will carry two-way, satellite-based radios for communication.
As of the 12-hour period prior to the storm’s projected landfall, the Interstate team in Orlando had accumulated extra water, food and fuel to operate for the duration of an anticipated one-week period without electricity.
“While the focus on life-and-limb is certainly everybody’s priority in a situation like this, we also have to consider the long-term impact on businesses, and people’s ability to sustain themselves well beyond the days and weeks of the storm’s impact,” Mazur said. “It is critical to everyone in that area -- and even well beyond -- that we help minimize the amount of ‘down time’ that a business must endure.”
