The roof over your head

It is stunning to see the pictures of the destruction that Sandy visited upon the Jersey Shore, Staten Island, Rockaway/Queens…

We’re used to seeing hurricanes tear up the Outer Banks, but to see it happen it such a densely populated and populous area. And happening this colossally. And happening this colossally close to home. Wow…

For the folks in lower Manhattan and other places who have “just”  had to cope with power outages – challenging, annoying, chilly, uncomfortable.

I sort of know what they’re going through.

We lost power for a couple of days after the Blizzard of ‘78, and we bundled up and survived. (Of course, in those days, there was less to do without.) When the banks reopened – this was before the ATM – we were limited to taking out $50. Cash in hand, I went to the neighborhood market, which had just gotten its first bread and milk delivery. They weren’t rationing, but there was a sign up requesting that people take only what they needed. As I waited to use part of my $50 to pay for my pumpernickel, I could not help but notice that the woman in front of me in line apparently had the need for a dozen loaves of bread. Maybe she was making bread pudding. Or stuffing. Or was off on a mission to feed all the starving birds on Boston Common.

But that was then, and this is now, and now there are so many whose neighborhoods are almost completely underwater, and so many whose neighborhoods look like a bomb went off. So many have lost pretty much everything, entire towns that are pretty much lost. The thought of starting over must be just overwhelming. Where do you begin, and where do you even start over.

Are some of these fragile, vulnerable, edge-of-the-encroaching ocean communities even able to be rebuilt? Should they be?

The ocean level’s getting higher, the weather’s getting wilder.

Shouldn’t new construction at least think about retreating inland?

There are so many haunting scenes:

The bathtub Madonna and the garden firefighter gnome that were still standing in the wreckage in Breezy. (Can’t say I’m looking forward to the Miracle of Breezy stories, I must say. Still, seeing that statue was plenty eerie.)

The Seaside Heights roller coaster collapsed into the sea, which must be just terrible to see for anyone who hung out at the Jersey Shore as a kid, or who took their kids there. (Ain’t no one who wants to see icons of their childhood disappear, or icons of their kids’ childhoods. Harsh.)

The plentiful videos of folks tromping over the wreckage of their homes looking for anything to salvage – a wedding picture, a Christmas ornament, a teacup, any little old thing. One woman on Staten Island told a reporter, ‘I just want to go home.’ Only her home had blown a mile down the road and smashed to smithereens.

I guess if there is any upside to the devastation, it’s that construction workers up and down the East Coast are going to have plenty of work over the next year or so.

And then there’s EagleView Technologies:

EagleView specializes in automating manual processes through technology. The insurance and construction industries rely on EagleView's patented technology and methods to provide detailed, accurate measurements from aerial imagery. The company continues to develop new technologies that lead to improved efficiency and increased profits for businesses and is expanding this concept to several new industries.

Way out west in Bothell, Washington, EagleView’s phone is ringing off the hook.

With the construction season winding down, the company was starting to decrease the hours for their employees. Then the destruction season started.

EagleView’s software pulls existing aerial photos of buildings and determines the size and pitch of the roof, measurements that would otherwise need to be taken by a person climbing up a ladder. Barrow says orders are up nearly tenfold from a normal week, with more than 20,000 daily requests, most of them Sandy-related. (Source: Business Week)

You can look at this as cutting into the opportunities of the “person climbing up the ladder”, whose services are no longer needed. But if that person is the claims adjuster – who with insurance companies and contractors are the prime audience for EagleView – he can now get to a damaged property in half the time. So, more work without having to risk life an limb climbing up the ladder.

Orders from insurance companies started pouring in Tuesday morning, [Eagle View CEO Chris] Barrow says, as homeowners on the East Coast began filing insurance claims. “It kind of surprised us a little bit,” he says. “The winds were still blowing.”

So now all the folks whose hours were being reduced are back in business. Good news!

EagleView has an interesting back story.

A couple of problem-solving brothers-in-law got together to, well, solve a problem.

One was a roofing contractor who “struggled with the process of measuring roofs accurately and safely.” He got together with his software engineer bro-in-law to come up with a better way. (Better living through software.)

The software engineer half of the duo did his initial prototyping with his wife’s ornamental birdhouses. (Better living through birdhouses.)

Anyway, I’m delighted for the EagleViewers, happy for the construction workers who’ll be getting more construction work, and hopeful for all those who just want to go home, and find that they still have a roof over their head.