On October 29th, 2013 Hurricane Sandy devastated Long Island’s South Shore leaving numerous families without homes for months. The storm damaged, destroyed, or severely flooded more than 100,000 homes on Long Island and by December 10th, more than 2000 homes were deemed uninhabitable -these are the types of moments where all of society needs to band together in order to help one another.
Hurricane Sandy has generated a large amount of work for us here on Long Island since many people are in need of entirely new installations due to a flooded basement. Because of the excess of work, Jim Shea (owner of Custom Vacuum Systems) decided he wanted to give back to the community and soon after he received a letter from a family asking us to help rebuild their home.
Here is a letter we received from Jeanne and her family.
Dear Mr. Shea,
On October 29, 2013 Super Storm Sandy flooded our home with over 6 feet of water which remained in our home for over 24 hours. Our home was once a place where our children’s friends would gather, a home that was full of much laugher and many good memories was so severely damaged that we had to abandon it for several months. After such a terribly frightening experience my husband and I choose to raise our home up and have a new foundation poured to prevent or minimize the possible reoccurrence of this catastrophic event.
On Wednesday February 13, 2013 while performing a house raising procedure on our home on Annuskemunica Road, Babylon we had a second disaster. As the house was being lowed onto the new foundation, all twelve of the hydraulic jacks, which were placed on an angle to help line up the house with the foundation were not properly secured. This resulted in the house toppling over causing the house to drop approximately 32 inches onto the foundation. This caused substantial damage to our home, contents inside the home and to the new foundation. We lost so many personal items not to mention how mentally and physically straining this has been on all of us. Any contents that survived this event were placed in a storage container which was over an hour from our home. Simple things like going for a bicycle ride were no longer something that we could look forward to because we had few personal items that survived the storm and the belongings that we did have were placed in storage.
Our three sons, our dog, my husband and I have been living out of our home for over a year now. It is not possible to summarize, even in a few sentences, the challenges we have faced, such simple things such as gathering for meals, celebrating the holidays, sleeping in your own bed or taking a hot shower in your own home.
The last few years of our lives have been very challenging. I have lost both my parents in the last three years. This is our third catastrophic event. Our prior home in Lindenhurst was flooded by Hurricane Gloria; in 2007 our present home in Babylon was destroyed by a fire. We had significant house damage by Hurricane Irene and my sister in-law Carolyn was just diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I am afraid of what tomorrow will bring. However, today was one of the best days in a while because our house plans have finally been submitted prior to our home being rebuilt. The cost of this project is escalating but, we are thrilled as we progress into this new phase and are anxious for the day when we can return home.
If at all possible we are asking you to consider helping us minimize the cost of purchasing and installing one of your new vacuum systems. There are many things I could live without but your central vacuum system is not an item that I would consider living without especially with our son’s asthma condition.
As always, I look forward to continuing to do business with you and sharing our positive thoughts about your vacuum system.
Sincerely your valued consumer,
Jeanne
After a few phone calls, VACUFLO and Custom Vacuums decided to team up in order to get Jeanne and her family back on their feet again – Vacuflo was gracious enough to supply us with all of the required parts and machinery for free, and Custom Vacuum Systems supplied the free installation. Jeanne is now one step closer to rebuilding her home and her family life again.
Here are some pictures of Jeanne’s before and after photos, as well as some pictures of Jim Shea working on the house:
