5 Years Since Sandy: How the Storm Shook Movers, Not Shakers!
October 29 marks the five year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. BKLYNER interviewed local business owners who were affected by the historic storm about their experiences and lessons learned.
RED HOOK – Mark Ehrhardt founded Movers, Not Shakers!, an environmentally friendly moving business, from his home in 2002. After moving to a couple of different office spaces around Brooklyn over the years, the company set up shop at 481 Van Brunt Street in 2006, in a warehouse across from Fairway in Red Hook, a “ground zero” for Hurricane Sandy, Ehrhardt says.
He recalls the extensive preparations he and his team made for Hurricane Irene in 2011. “We put tarps over the front of the doors and sandbagged everything….” The crew put down plywood, reinforcing it with 2 x 4s, “basically everything we could to keep the water out,” Ehrhardt says. “That was all we really could do short of moving everything out of the warehouse,” he adds.
Ehrhardt and his team took the same precautions for Sandy, except for moving the computers. When Irene hit, Ehrhardt temporarily relocated all the computers in the office to an additional office space he had at the time, but since this extra effort proved unnecessary for the underwhelming storm, he decided not to move them for Sandy.
This was a mistake. “The entire warehouse got destroyed. Everything got picked up, put back down, completely wiped out,” he said of the second, more powerful storm. “All of the computers got ruined except for the one on my desk.”
He recalls this stroke of luck—”My desk actually floated in the water and when the water drained, it came back down in a different position but the computer never fell off the desk. We were able to pull the data off of that one machine.”
Sandy flooded the 8,000-square-foot Red Hook facility with approximately 5 feet of water. Fortunately, the fleet of Movers, Not Shakers! trucks were safe, parked in a lot by Smith and 9th Streets in Gowanus—”right there on the Gowanus Canal,” Ehrhardt says. “The Lowe’s parking side is lower than the other side of the Gowanus,” he explains. All the water flowed away from the lot, “so our trucks were spared,” he adds.
Since the storm knocked out the phone lines at the warehouse, Ehrhardt purchased a cell phone with a new telephone number and put that number on the company’s website. With the trucks unharmed, he was able to continue running his moving business from a temporary office.
More problematic was another facet of his business—storage. Movers, Not Shakers! stored customers’ belongings temporarily at the Van Brunt Street warehouse, housing items as the owners’ transitioned from one location to another. Approximately 30 customers lost their possesions stored at the Red Hook warehouse during the storm. Having to deal with his own insurance company, as well as inspectors sent by the insurers of his upset customers, it took several weeks before Ehrhardt could start cleaning up the damage after the storm.
With assistance from Marty Markowitz’s office, the Brooklyn Borough President at the time, the Army Corps of Engineers sent containers to the warehouse to cart away all the wreckage. “Over the course of 2 to 3 days, with 4 containers at a time, we were able to get rid of all the stuff and get [the warehouse] down to broom-clean status and then give it back…. We were able to leave on good terms,” he says. Movers, Not Shakers! left the Red Hook facility at the end of 2012. With a $40,000 New York State loan, Ehrhardt was able to cover his losses and get his company back on its feet.
“We were looking forward to staying,” he says of the former space. “Red Hook is wonderful and a great place to do business on so many levels, but the storm exposed the vulnerability of the entire land mass that Red Hook exists on. We all knew that we were 8 feet above sea level, but to be a victim of a weather event just made it untenable. You can’t stay there if you’re a business [and] there’s a third party involved, like storage. You can’t put other people’s goods at risk.”
After operating out of a temporary office at Smith and 9th Streets, the company moved into its current location as 131 3rd Street in November 2014. Housed in the former Statewide Fireproof Door Company building between Bond Street and the Gowanus Canal, the new facility features a second story, which the Red Hook location lacked. Customer storage and the administrative offices are primarily situated on the upper level, while moving supplies such as reusable bins and blankets are kept on the ground level.
When asked why he relocated to another area prone to flooding, he concedes, “It’s true. There’s no doubt about it,” but adds, “3rd Street itself is a thoroughfare between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens….. If you look up 3rd Street [toward the new facility] you’re going straight up a hill.”
Ehrhardt argues that Sandy was an uncommon event, and that his Gowanus lease is only for five years, so the chances of another storm of that magnitude striking again while he’s there are slim. And if one does hit, he insists that he and his team are ready “to the extent that we can be…. If we need to get ready for a big storm, we could get everything on the first floor either upstairs or on a truck.”
His advice to other business owners situated in vulnerable areas is to “take all forecasts seriously,” and “to be ready to do things at certain times. You can’t save it all to the end because you’ll never get it all done, especially if there’s a lot of physical moving that has to happen. You have to have drop-dead times, including biting the bullet and asking staff to do things that aren’t revenue generating. You just have to be ready, aware, and committed.”
Ehrhardt hasn’t left Red Hook entirely. He’s been living there for the past 12 years. Sandy affected him both at work and at home, yet he takes it in stride, often telling people, “We lost our entire office and warehouse. We got water up to the ceiling in our basement and we lost a car, but other than that, it really wasn’t too bad.”
When asked if he’s considered relocating his home away from Red Hook as well, he replies, “Of course, I think everyone who lives in Red Hook does, whether they own or rent. It was a traumatic experience, and I think everybody who lives here thinks about it all the time. It’s entered into the DNA of the neighborhood and it never left once it happened.”
Movers, Not Shakers!
131 3rd Street, Gowanus
718-243-0221
