The images, when they flashed on TV screens across America, were heartbreaking. Whole communities flattened. Iconic landmarks washed into the sea. More than 100 dead. Thousands homeless. Many others without power. When Superstorm Sandy struck the Northeast, saving some of her most crushing blows for New Jersey’s famous shore, a nation wept.But at the Florida offices of Ellis, Ged & Bodden, P.A., this was more than a natural disaster in some distant state. This was personal. This was our home, our property, our community, our neighbors, friends and loved ones.
A number of us in this firm – me and my cousin, EGB attorney Marius “Marty” Ged, included – grew up on the Jersey Shore, spending some of our fondest childhood memories on the boardwalk that now looks like a bombed-out ghost town, and on the Ferris wheel that crumbled into the sea. This was the state, and the community, in which we were born and raised. Most of us still have family there, and many of us own our own properties there, homes we grew up in, businesses that feed our loved ones, properties now devastated by one of the worst natural disasters in modern American history.
We couldn’t sit by and watch the devastation on a TV screen. We knew we had to act. So Ellis, Ged & Bodden, P.A., opened up new offices in our home state of New Jersey, and this month, we’ll open another one in neighboring New York.
After more than a decade in hurricane-prone Florida, we have experienced our share of natural disasters, and we know what it takes to dig out. We know that home and business owners will have to comb their properties closely for structural damage, and we know they’ll have some significant challenges in working with their property insurers to recoup the costs for fixing that damage – coverage they’ve paid for and have coming to them.
Our team is lending its expertise to help them do just that, not just by offering our legal services but by hosting free educational seminars to answer their questions and guide them through the process of recovery. We’ve brought with us to these workshops a team of public adjusters, forensic window experts and structural engineers, offering pointers and checklists on what to do in processing their claims and how to deal with an insurer that denies or shortchanges a claim for damages.
As Floridians – transplanted or otherwise – we all know only too well how fragile life and property can be in the face of nature’s wrath, and how expensive, complicated and often heartbreaking it can be to restore a community to its once-brilliant luster.
So I ask that you keep New Jersey, New York and the rest of Sandy’s storm victims in your thoughts and do whatever you can, big or small, to help them through a most difficult time. Many of them spent the holidays in hotel rooms, on loved ones’ couches or without power. They rang in the New Year not knowing whether they’d be safe again. And they huddled with friends and family, not so much to celebrate but to commiserate and hold one another up.
This is just the beginning of a long, difficult road for our friends and neighbors up North. It’s tough, but it’s possible, with everyone standing together.
