Thunderball Marketing, Inc., an Avenel, NJ-based distributor of consumer electronics and pro-DJ equipment was hit hard by hurricane Sandy last week, with facilities losing power and two co-located warehouses subjected to a shocking level of water damage. Thunderball’s Alan Henslovitz told strata-GEE.com that his rough estimate is that the company has been hit with somewhere between $10-$15 million in losses based on destroyed & damaged inventory and lost business.
Learn more about the impact of Sandy on Thunderball Marketing below…
According to Henslovitz, security systems alerted company officials that there was a problem at their facility during last week’s Hurricane Sandy. Employees tried to get to the company on Tuesday but were not able to get through.
On Wednesday, Henslovitz told us they were able to get into the building…and just couldn’t believe their eyes.
“I’ve had thirty years of files and contacts destroyed in the flooding,” Henslovitz told us. “As far as the inventory, the destruction is unbelievable.”
In Thunderball’s warehouse, literally full pallets of products were floated up until they tipped over, often knocking other pallets full of equipment into the water.
“We were able to measure the water line on the wall,” Henslovitz told us. “We had nearly four feet of water throughout this and our other brand-new 25,000 sq. ft. warehouse” on the property.
As of yesterday, one full week after the hurricane, the company was still without power. But as a grim reminder of the monster “superstorm” that battered the entire East Coast, Thunderball still had a flooded parking lot that needed to be pumped out with a portable pump.
“FEMA came in on Thursday morning to inspect our damage and take pictures,” Henslovitz told us. “He had come from Kansas City to work this storm and told us that he had never seen anything like this.”
While other facilities in the vicinity have had their power restored, Thunderball was still dark. Henslovitz told us that they had made several attempts to contact PSE&G with no success.
Although Henslovitz said that he had no idea where so much water had come from, we strongly suspect that Thunderball was a victim of the area’s record-setting 14-foot storm surge which had inundated the whole coastal area. Even now, well after the storm, Thunderball had standing water in their warehouse and parking lot.
Company vehicles parked in their lot had been submerged during the storm and were now ruined. Henslovitz told us that customer shipments staged on their shipping dock to go out the next day were all ruined in the flood.
“We’re just shrink-wrapping millions of dollars worth of ruined inventory on pallets,” Henslovitz sighed.
Henslovitz sounded lost as he surveyed all of the damage surrounding him as he spoke to us on his cell phone. The insurance adjuster was due in later this same day. Sounding a little fatalistic, Henslovitz told us that the company’s future is pretty much in the insurance company’s hands.
Without the insurance company’s support…”We could be out of business,” Henslovitz told us, his voice trailing off.
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