The Fury of Frances

Whether they were holding it from a near miss with Hurricane Charley, or trying to catch it in the rush to clean up, Florida contractors barely had time to take a breath before Hurricane Frances, the second storm to hit the state in less than a month, showed up on their doorstep.

“Hurricane Charley hit our area and the Fort Myers area pretty hard, and Hurricane Frances just came through with some pretty heavy wind and high rain, but the damage wasn’t that intense,” says Lawrence Perillo, director of horticultural management, Smallwood Landscape, Naples, Fla. “It has caused us to mobilize literally seven days a week working 15, 16, 17-hour days. A couple of us have worked around the clock and things are kind of tapering off now, but probably for the last three or three and one-half weeks since Charley, we’ve been pretty stretched.”

Perillo says that everybody from the Smallwood office staff on up participated in a team effort to get things cleaned up. They also contacted some affiliates from other areas of the state and subcontracted them to come over and help with the effort.

Other contractors’ staffs have pitched in to keep things running, as well. When Hurricane Frances destroyed the offices of Images of Green in Stuart, Fla., its secretary, Dusty MacPherson, opened up her home to serve as a temporary headquarters. “This one was a direct hit right on us,” MacPherson says, “We are in Stuart, where it came ashore.”

For the interim, the company’s phone lines have been forwarded to MacPherson’s home, as she is the only employee who has power. “My boss doesn’t have power at his home,” she says. “My house looks like 10 people live here, so it’s just crazy. That’s what it’s like. You don’t really want to go through this.”

By the time Frances reached contractors on the west coast of Florida, it had been downgraded to a tropical storm, but still packed enough power to cause damage.

“For the Tampa Bay area it was almost a pseudo wake-up call because we were in direct line for Charley and it turned,” says Dean Akers, president, Akers Holdings LLC, Tampa, Fla.
He says people quickly changed their cavalier view of Frances once the storm hit them. “I think people saw that a tropical storm as a big deal, and if a hurricane was to come, we all need to get out of here. We had a lot of trees down. We had a lot of landscape damage for sure, but we didn’t have a lot of structural damage, other than the mobile homes, that you would traditionally see in a full-blown hurricane.”

The extra rainfall generated by Hurricane Charley pushed back Akers’ construction business, which generates 70 percent of the company’s revenue. He says waterlogged construction sites have kept building contractors from being able to finish their work, so his company can’t start their jobs. To compensate, he’s shifted some of his construction workers to the maintenance side of the business to help with handling the influx of customer calls seeking immediate attention. “It’s creating work for our maintenance crews and in order to help our client base, we’ve actually pulled off some of our contracting crews to do cleanup,” he says.

Contractors also say that they haven’t seen or had competition from fly-by-night clean-up crews. “Our customer base is calling us because they need somebody to respond immediately who knows their property,” Akers says.

“We’ve been so busy trying to service the needs of our existing clientele and trying to maintain that level of quality and service that we’re known for,” Perillo adds, also pointing out that the hurricanes have brought extra business in the form of new customers. “We’ve actually gone ahead and serviced some past clients and a handful of new clients that were in desperate need. But our main focus is and will always be our existing client base from a horticultural management standpoint. They’re the ones who put food in our mouths each week.”

Contractors say the price of renting equipment has remained stable despite the high demand that came as a result of the hurricanes, however locating this extra equipment has been challenging. “Our crews are working and we’ve hired about 20 temporary people and we’re trying to let our permanent guys operate the chainsaws, but we have about 20 saws and five of them broke. It took me half a day just to locate anybody else who was going to get more and have them hold them for us, so that’s how crazy it is,” MacPherson says.

Some clients are even calling contractors asking them to remove trees that aren’t damaged just because they want to prevent damage to their home in case of another hurricane. “They got so scared because of the hurricane causing damage to so many homes they don’t even want a chance of any tree falling on their house,” Akers says.

Clients’ foresight to remove as-yet-undisturbed trees may not take long to pay off. Forecasters and contractors are keeping a wary eye on Hurricane Ivan, a Category 5 storm, as it continues on its destructive course towards the US. If it hits Florida, it will be the first time that three hurricanes have hit the state in a six-to-eight-week period since 1964 when Dora, Isabelle and Cleo made landfall, according to www.cnn.com. “That’s the one that’s got everyone nervous, quite frankly,” Akers says.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Web site, the statistical peak of hurricane season falls on Sept. 10, and the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season officially ends on Nov. 30.

“You know, I’ve been here 10 years in this location in Florida and we’ve had some close calls and you just never anticipate that it’s going to come your way,” Perillo says. “This year, between rain and tropical storms and hurricanes, we’re a marked target.”