HELP IS ON WAY
Contractor heads to Texas to help those in need after Harvey horror
RIDLEY TOWNSHIP» Crews at Proaction Restoration Inc. are collecting diapers until 6 p.m. Friday before they board their trucks and head out on a 22-hour drive to help victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas.
Three four-man crews from the Holmes business are headed to Corpus Christi, Texas, and will be working their way towards Houston as they use fans and drying equipment to remove the water from flooded homes.
“We were originally supposed to leave Monday night but now we’re getting calls they need us ASAP,” said Mike McIntyre, owner of Proaction Restoration Inc. “I remember going down to (Hurricane) Sandy, down to South Jersey and that was devastating. Matthew was bad, a lot of wind, last year but this ... looks like something we’ve never seen.”
Proaction receives direction from Chubb Insurance and AIG, which tells them where to go. They’re committed to be on site for three to four weeks, going from home to home clearing out damaged materials and drying out homes.
“You’re in the heart of what’s going on ... so it’s good,” McIntyre said. “Once we get down there and get mobilized, they’ll probably send us 10 jobs a day.”
He turned to his crews.
“These kids are going to be working 14-hour days,” he said, “and I told them that so they want to watch the Eagles game, they gotta watch it with a hammer in their hand.”
Of the four trucks they’re driving down, one they want to fill with supplies for the Texas Diaper Bank.
“We’re going to bring one of our trucks down there and we’re going to load it up with diapers,” he said, adding they are accepting all donations of diapers for children and adults, wipes and for- mula from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and Friday at their 2216 Amosland Road, Holmes, location.
McIntyre said he picked this because he was looking at donation lists and saw the great need for these items.
He himself has seen the wreckage natural disasters can do firsthand.
They were dispatched to New Jersey in 2012 and then again to Florida last year.
“Sandy, it was bad, it was sad,” McIntyre said, yet he added, “I think we’re going to be in for a culture shock when we get down there. I talked to a guy today, another restoration guy from Connecticut and he says he’s sleeping in his car.”
Right now, his crews will be staying in Austin to work 2.5 hours away in Corpus Christi, but they plan to keep moving into Houston as soon as conditions clear.
McIntyre told of his greatest concern.
“Texas is one of the hottest states in the country,” he said. “With the heat and humidity, there’s the mold issue, it’s very bad. Once you get mold issues, that’s a whole other level of problems. The quicker we get in there, the quicker we start doing the demo, getting the carpets and drywall out, putting (in) the fans, then we’ll be good.” His crews are ready to help. Daniel Garrity of Secane also responded to the Matthew disaster last year.
“It was good to give back,” he said.
Garrity said he’s accustomed to those situations.
“We see it every day here,” he said. “People that are upset. We deal with people who are upset on a daily basis as it is.”
McIntyre said, “You just prepare yourself for the worst, I think.”
While his work his dictated by the insurance companies’ orders – they don’t do any cold calling or knocking on doors there, he said — normally contractor licenses are required but the situation is so dire that regulation has been suspended.
“At this point,” McIntyre said, “they need all the help they can get.”
“We were originally supposed to leave Monday night but now we’re getting calls they need us ASAP. I remember going down to (Hurricane) Sandy, down to South Jersey and that was devastating. Matthew was bad, a lot of wind, last year but this ... looks like something we’ve never seen.” — Mike McIntyre, owner of Proaction Restoration Inc.