SERVPRO of Great Neck Port Washington Provides Preventive Planning Tips to Community

2/27/2014 (Permalink)

Sandy "veterans": SERVPRO of GNPW Vice President of Marketing Deborah Rashti (l) with Danny Wallace, owner.

Below is a reprint of an article which appeared in

The Weekend, November 2013

HURRICANE SANDY: ONE YEAR LATER

Preventative Planning Before Emergencies Arise

By Andy Newman

Deborah Rashti saw far too many instances of extreme devastation, heartbreak and loss caused by Superstorm Sandy last year in her role as vice president for SERVPRO of Great Neck/Port Washington, a company that specializes in storm, flood and disaster restoration, she has several suggestions to help lessen the effects of any future serious weather events.

“Advance planning is key to how you will fare after a disaster,” she said. “Consider taking steps today, before an emergency arises.”

Rashti emphasizes that having a properly assembled “go bag” is prime in importance.  “Pick up a blank CD and scan your key documents,” she urged. “Unfortunately today, we’re required to identify who we are, where we live and what we own.”

Help on scanning documents is available, usually at local libraries and insurance offices.  She suggested, “You want to scan any document that helps identify who you are, where you live and what you own.  Your marriage certificate, your birth certificate, your social security card and any titles to anything that you own whether it’s a car, a motorcycle, a house or a boat are important.”

“Any bank account/checking account numbers and credit card numbers that you have should also be scanned,” she added. “If your house was badly damaged, the Red Cross would come into your community with trucks and these trucks would be equipped with computers that could read that disk.  With this information available the Red Cross would then be able to expedite services that they could give you.”

Store the disk in a very safe place.  The Servpro executive continued, “Make sure you know where you’re storing it in your house.  Store it on a high level in your home.  Make extra copies of the disk and put one in a safe deposit box.  Remember where you’re storing it because should you need to leave your house immediately, you need to take it with you.”  Homeowners should also be sure to seek advice on encrypting the disk’s contents to enhance the security of its information.

There are several suggested lists of essential items to include in a “go bag” and Rashti advises referring to the Red Cross website (www.redcross.org) as a start. “You should have some kind of antibiotic cream packed,” she said, “because you cannot anticipate what kind of hazards you could face outside.  You need to have it because the hospitals will be deluged during a crisis and you want to be as independent as possible. 

“So you want to have some sort of first aid kit and some heavy gloves, too,” she explained, “because if you need to avoid debris you need to be able to push it away from you without exposing yourself to injury.  If you take medication, make plans to have an extra month’s supply on hand.  Drugs may not be readily available.  As for warm socks and a change of clothing, it doesn’t have to be any special kind.  But if you need to go, you need to know that it’s sitting there and waiting.”

Rashti’s own “go bag” contains cans of tuna fish and peanut butter.  “Pack food products that are not going to go bad and some water bottles that you can take with you,” she says. “The same thing applies if you have a pet.”

As for her next tip, Rashti said, “I suggested to many people, even before Sandy and Katrina, that you throw a lot of loose change and singles, fives, tens into the bag.  You want to be able to go into stores to buy food and, as happened during Sandy, they don’t have a way of making change for you.  Some people wound up paying $20.00 for a bagel and coffee because all they had were twenties from the ATM cash machines.

“You really have to think ahead,” she added, switching her focus to long range planning.  “You have to have a good relationship with your insurance company or agent.  It’s critical.  You need a broker who really explains to you what you’re paying for and what that coverage is.  I can’t tell you how many people were stunned to find out that they didn’t have coverage that they thought they had.  Everyone is usually concerned with paying the least amount for their insurance but when things happen they realize that it’s a very foolish way to look at it.

“Things tend to happen when we’re not home, or at times when there’s no one who can help us,” Rashti cautioned.  “It’s always smart to make sure that there’s somebody else (a neighbor, a friend, a relative) who has a key to the house and who definitely checks on the house every once in a while because we get phone calls from neighbors sometimes that there’s a flood in the basement but we can’t get in.  As an owner you’re not always going to be at home.  The insurance company is not going to cover you if they find that the problem wasn’t taken care of as soon as possible.”

Whether you think our weather patterns are changing for the worse or there just seem to be more and more serious weather events, Rashti agrees that events are frequent.  “When you watch the weather station use realize that there’s something going on almost every day,” she pointed out.  “Look at the Midwest – tornado alley?  This is happening to them all the time.  Look at our neighbors in Colorado.  Don’t forget what happened with that fertilizer factory in Texas.

“When I joined SERVPRO six years ago we had only 10 branches on Long Island.  Now we have 20.  We had 1,400 around the country. Now we have 1,600.  So you have to question how come a company that only deals in disasters could be growing so fast.”

Despite an increased number of mircobursts, windstorms, hailstorms and tornadoes in this area, Rashti feels that Long Islanders have been relatively lucky.  “Until Sandy came along, she said, “we never remember anything like it happening.  Some people recall the Level 3 hurricane storm of 1938, but everything east of Glen Cove Road at that time was basically farmland.  Any hurricane now that is more than a Level 1 would be horrible, because we are so congested on this island.”

SERVPRO's website (www.servprogreatneckportwashington.com) has an extensive list of tips and suggestions, including advice on what to do to lessen the damage until help arrives.