Businesses just recovering from damage

A number of area businesses took hard hits from Tropical Storm Irene suffering a broad range of degrees of damage from the minor to the extreme.

At the Granville McDonald’s the clean up process began Monday morning bright and early.

As the Indian River went back down below flood stage and slithered back across Route 22, workers were already pulling out items ruined by the waters of Tropical Storm Irene. Food inventory was lost due to the power outages from the freezers.

Dry goods stored on lower shelves were lost from the 33 inches of flood water that inundated the restaurant Sunday night at the same time first responders performed heroic rescues just a hundred yards away.

All of the store’s equipment from fryers and grills to cash registers and displays were destroyed by the waters.

Every bit of the dining room from garbage cans to tables and chairs will have to be replaced as well as any internal walls made of gypsum board.

A manager at the site said repairs at the store would require at least two weeks to complete, adding it was difficult to tell much beyond that vague idea when the doors would open again.

Everything needed to get the restaurant back up and running had been ordered, she said.

Workers displaced by the store shut down have two options, the manager said. They can go and work at other McDonald’s in the area or they can work as a part of the clean up crew here in Granville.

Across the parking lot, a crew worked Wednesday readying the Subway and Bongo’s for reopening.

Bongo’s owner Ben Bernard said both sites lost inventory due to the power being turned off, but little in terms of equipment had been lost.

A cooler compression was giving a repairman fits at the Subway, but most other pieces of cooking equipment survived the flooding.

With new inventory ordered, Subway reopened Friday.

In Middle Granville adjacent the Mettowee River and the bridge at the intersection of county Route 24 and Route 22A Chapman’s General Store is back up and running after a brief closure.

“As good as can be expected,” owner Marti Jurnak answered when asked how the store was doing. Their inventory losses probably reach into the thousands of dollars due to the seven inches of water that made its way into the store, she said. 

Despite a stressful week since Tropical Storm Irene brought flood waters up into the store as the entire area around Chapman’s flooded, Jurnak said the support she received had been a tremendous help.

Jurnak said friends and neighbors and even complete strangers were helping the staff to clean up while they were closed.

“We were closed for two and a half days but now we’re back in business and it feels really good,” she said. Jurnak said Sunday was extremely busy with people coming in for food and gas right up until the time when they were told they had to turn the power off and evacuate.

“Fortunately, these old buildings are pretty resilient to things like this,” she said.

As the flood waters raged, Jurnak said she witnessed an event many people are still talking about: a deck floating by completely ready for an afternoon meal, with a table and chairs still on it.

The deck, which belonged to Gary Manning, met its fate against the side of the Middle Granville Bridge.