As waters flooded the blue-walled store at Surf City Marina in New Jersey on Saturday, Kenny Formica’s mind went straight to Hurricane Sandy. It was the only time the boat dealership – run by his family since the 1980s – flooded.
“We rarely get water here, but it’s just something else,” Formica said of the intense nor’easter that hit the Northeast this weekend. “Hurricane Sandy taught us that if flooding was going to happen, it would happen. You can’t stop it.”
Surf City Marina is on the west end of Long Beach Island, overlooking Manahawkin Bay. Formica told CNN he was watching surveillance footage from his mainland home Saturday morning when he noticed glistening water where the store’s carpet should have been.
He called his father, his partner at the marina, and told him that the damage to the store and its docks was bound to be worse than they expected.
“I don’t have the energy for cleanup, much less my dad. Here’s a guy who built the docks originally from scratch, and rebuilt them after Sandy,” Formica said. “He just can’t rebuild them a third time.”
Formica had woken up Saturday to text messages from worried customers and neighbors saying the flooding in their area was worse than expected and that he should check his marina.
“Given the time of year, our cash flow drops significantly as a seasonal marina, and now I’m going to have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to rip out carpet, replace inventory, rip out drywall,” he said.
But all he can do now is hope Sunday’s forecast won’t bring even greater devastation, he said.
“I mean, it’s never going to be easy, but we keep going,” he said.
Formica added: “It’s the shoreline. It’s resilient, it’s strong, it will always bounce back.”
CNN’s Nic Anderson contributed to this report.
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