Hurricane Ida’s remnants dumped several inches of rain in the Northeast on Wednesday, prompting the National Weather Service’s first-ever flash flood warning for New York City, and producing massive flooding across the region that caused more than two dozen deaths in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The storm began its path in Louisiana on Sunday, coming ashore as one of the strongest hurricanes to hit the U.S. in recent memory and leaving behind significant damage and loss of life.
As of Wednesday morning, power was slowly being restored to some homes and businesses in New Orleans after being out for four days, but it is estimated to be weeks before full recovery of power and water in the state. PPAI has reached out to industry companies in the Northeast to learn more about their experience with the storm. Fortunately, all those PPAI contacted report their companies are operational with only minor disruptions.
“Indeed, there has been seismic disruption here in New York City—subway stations flooded and public transportation shut down overnight. Traffic this morning was at a standstill with highway and street closures,” says Michael Reisbaum, vice president of national accounts at Long Island City-based Blue Generation. “Things are getting back to normal this AM. It’s a beautiful day and the weather is delightful! Blue Generation is completely open, our office, warehouse and decoration facilities were universally unaffected. Some of our staff are working from home—me, included—but we’ve been prepared to do so based upon the last year’s experience, so we are functioning at 100-percent efficiency.”
Ira Neaman, MAS, president of Vantage Apparel in Avenel, New Jersey, adds, “We are open. Most factory employees showed great resiliency in coming to work. Officially, we had a delayed opening of two hours.”
Christina Ehret, manager of customer service and compliance at Newark, New Jersey’s Peerless Umbrella, says, “We are up and running but with a reduced staff. At this time, we don’t see any delays in production and both FedEx and UPS (Ground) have said they will be making pick-ups today. Customers may see a delay from our customer service team, but we are doing our best to respond to every email, phone call and web chat as quickly as possible.”
Before Hurricane Ida made landfall, President Biden approved emergency declarations for the states of Louisiana and Mississippi. Houston, Texas-based supplier Hirsch Gift announced earlier this week that it is accepting and distributing donations of qualified essential relief items for those affected by the storm. For more information on what supplies they are looking for, click here.
PPAI, in conjunction with the Regional Association Council (RAC), is offering disaster relief to help promotional products industry members and nonmembers located in federally declared natural disaster areas get back to business through the Promotional Products Disaster Recovery Foundation (PPDRF) Business Recovery Fund. Visit ppai.org/PPDRF if you or someone you know has specific needs to re-open a business, wants to update contact information or has questions about the PPDRF.