Businesses Dig Out From Flood of '07

– By Peter Jovanovich –

“Looking back, it seems like a nightmare,” said Martha Bentley, manager of Merritt Realty. Merritt's offices are at 43 Theodore Fremd Ave., which was directly in the path of the rising floodwaters on March 2.

“Early that morning, we called the police to say there was water in the parking lot. We knew the signs of a flood. It's happened a number of times, so we thought we were prepared,” Bentley recalls. “But, the water rose so fast! Within 10 minutes of our call to the police, the water was coming in the front door.”

Merritt lost carpeting, furniture, computers and files to the flood, which left the ground floor permeated with mildew. The heat, plumbing and electricity were out for four days, leaving the building bitterly cold during the cold snap that followed the flood. To top it all off, when the heat came back on, somehow it cracked the front window.

“But we're thankful that Merritt is on two floors,” said Bentley. “Everyone in the office pitched in and helped move what we could salvage to the second floor. Everything is now working, and we're fine.”

For Sam Moy, owner of Fong's, 36 Elm Place, this was the second worst flood he's experienced in the 38 years he's been running his laundry and dry cleaning business. “Around 9:30 in the morning, I checked the height of Blind Brook against a particular stone in the retaining wall that I regularly use to gauge how high the flood will be. It seemed it wouldn't be that bad, but just moments later the water was in the street.”

Moy acted quickly to protect the neighboring businesses from fire by turning off the electric main that supplies all the tenants in the building. “Then,” he said, “we rushed to move all the laundry higher within the store so it wouldn't get damaged. But, all the goods in the basement (hangers, paper collars, etc.) and all of the equipment (boilers, compressors, electric panel) were destroyed. To give you an idea how bad the damage was, Moy, with the help of his many friends, filled up two 30-foot dumpsters with refuse and damaged equipment in the days after.

Of course, Moy wasn’t the only one to act quickly. The Rye Police Department worked with Con Ed to shut off the power in all of the affected areas. Said Detective Lieutenant Joe Verelle III, “People don’t always realize how quickly their electric panel in the basement can short and send current through the water.  There’s a real risk that someone may go down into a flooded basement and get seriously hurt.” 

No one was hurt, thankfully, but, as Virelle notes, it could have been much worse. “In some sense, we were lucky. If the storm had peaked in the night, if the winds had been higher or the temperature colder, the recovery effort would have been much more difficult.”

What can be done to protect Rye from such floods in the future? Sam Moy recalls that after the June 18, 1972 flood, when waters rose about five inches higher than the '07 flood, the City made an effort to clean up the Brook so that the channel was deeper. In addition, he suggests, “the City might consider replacing the metal pipe fence along the Brook with a stone wall. Not only would that keep downtown from flooding as much, a stone wall would be more attractive.”

Architect Rex Gedney's office is right across the Brook from Fong's at 41 Elm Place. He couldn't even get to his building that morning, as the floodwaters were so high. Thankfully, the City rescued the employees already in the building, taking them out via a front loader. Gedney jokes that working beside the Brook is like being a member of a “frequent flood program.”

Gedney observes that this flood was almost as bad as in '72, when the bridge to his office was swept away. As to mitigating flood damage, he believes that commercial and residential development up stream, in Rye Brook, Harrison and Purchase, may have increased the volume of water flowing through Rye. “And,” Gedney says, “when a torrent passes under the bridges, and turns 90 degrees at Theodore Fremd, it has no place to go but over the banks of Blind Brook.”

So many people depend on the Rye Y to stay open seven days a week for all sorts of activities. Remarkably, after all the damage to its facilities, it was open for business just two days after the flood. Said Gregg Howells, Executive Director, “We're grateful for the extraordinary cooperation of the staff and our electrical, HV AC and other suppliers to get us up and running so quickly.”

The Y, in its new building, has never flooded as badly. Even though Howells and others began making preparations as early as 7 a.m. that morning, the waters kept rising until at noon the basement was flooded to a height of five feet and the power, phones, boilers and pumps were not working. “The hard part,” says Howells, “was getting the boilers to start working again since a pump was malfunctioning. Fortunately, our maintenance staff rigged a solution, using a substitute pump and parts from Home Depot, and by 6:30 Saturday night the heat was back on. With a lot of hard work, clearing the mud from the parking lot and replacing part of the path that was washed away, we opened Sunday morning — even in time to host some birthday parties.”

A number of other businesses were affected, some seriously, such as Parkers and Rye Country Store. Parkers lost a great of deal of its inventory of clothing when its basement was completely flooded. Rye Country Store narrowly escaped catastrophic damage. When they lost electricity as the storm began, the pumps failed and the waters rose six feet in the basement — just six inches from ruining its ovens. Only through the fast action of Con Ed and other service providers was the store saved.  As owner Chris Colalucci said, “It was pretty damn close.”