Pro bono cleaning applied to village hall and fire department
(Photo courtesy of Marketing Masters)
With the Village of Farmingdale getting ready to reopen and moving from Phase 1 to Phase 2 of the state’s plan to get businesses of every stripe back up and running. Bill and Steve Loiacono of Servpro of Farmingdale/Massapequa felt the need to give back. With their franchise specializing in fire and water restoration, in addition to restoration, the Loiaconos were happy to volunteer to clean/disinfect Farmingdale Village Hall and the Village of Farmingdale Fire House. As Farmingdale natives who are also alumni of the local high school, it felt like the right thing to do.
“Pretty much from the start of the pandemic, we quickly realized that it’s unprecedented and we were going to have to do what we were going to have to do to help our business community try and reopen and get back to normal,” Steve said. “We thought [things would open up and] it would be a lot sooner and a lot quicker quite frankly. No one expected this. We’ve been through a lot of disasters—the Sandys, Irenes and all the way back to the first Nor’easter. We’ve never observed anything like this. We both grew up here and it was important for us to give back.”
Going in with a three-man crew, Servpro spent between five and six hours spraying and applying disinfectant throughout the buildings with power equipment, before wiping down all the surfaces inside of the buildings. This was also the second time the Loiaconos had volunteered their services for a cleanup at the firehouse when the building’s Ansul fire suppressant system accidentally discharged a number of years ago.
“The fire department had an issue with their Ansul system when it opened up and created a real problem in their kitchen,” Steve recalled. “We volunteered our services and spent several days with a crew of five people in their little kitchen. When I walked through there when we were doing the disinfecting again, it was shining and we were happy to help out in any way we could.”
(Photo courtesy of Marketing Masters)
“I guess it inadvertently went off and sprayed this Ansel, which is a contaminant that is used to put the fire out,” Bill added. “So it sprayed throughout the kitchen, so everything had to be cleaned.”
Not unlike the rest of the world, Servpro of Farmingdale/Massapequa has had to find its own equilibrium in the post-COVID-19 world.
“First and foremost, this is a family-owned and operated business,” Bill said. “It’s me, my brother and my son [Paul] running the production side of things. The first thing we had to do was take a step back and get a game plan together because we didn’t know how bad this thing was going to get and we didn’t want to be in harm’s way either. We had to make sure that our employees were safe and that everyone was issued their personal protective equipment. Then we had to go from there. We all ended up under quarantine for one reason or another. Whether it was because it was someone we knew that was exposed to someone who had it. Or just the sheer fact that the government shut us down and we had not choice but to lock ourselves in. It’s a slow beginning to get things started and that’s basically what it’s been like around here.”
For the Loiaconos, it is the latest chapter in a company founded by their father in the ‘70s. Older brother Bill got his start in the late ‘70s while younger brother followed in his footsteps in the early ‘80s. While the company operated under different names including Cleaning Man, TCM and finally Globe Restoration and Construction, the family-owned business became a Servpro franchise in July 2012. The affiliation with this franchisor headquartered in Gallatin, TN, has enabled the Loiaconos to expand their ability to tackle jobs of all sizes.
“We’ve been independents right up until [July 2012],” Steve explained. “[In becoming a franchise], it gives us that ability to take on those larger type losses. We’ve been involved with those size losses in the Farmingdale area in the industrial area where we were able to access people and get about 35 or 40 people in there to maintain the manufacturing facilities and keep them online and do 24-7 shifts. We have the ability to have 300 men the following day [after a crisis] with a million dollars of equipment to take care of that. [Our parent company] would send anything we would need right in trailers from Gallatin, TN. They also have those trailers strategically placed around the Island as well. While it does give us the ability to do larger jobs, we cater to the residentials and smaller businesses as well.”
Between the experience the brothers bring to the business of fire and water cleanup and the support they get from their parent company, Bill feels his company has the kind of legitimacy people are looking for in this time of coronavirus cleanup as they are looking to reopen their businesses.
“Whenever there is something like a pandemic or a situation like this, people come out of the woodwork and it’s guys with these pop-up shops who really don’t have the experience who are the biggest issue,” he said. “We consult, clean and certify. The first thing you want to do is get a company like ours to come in and consult and give you a game plan as to how and go about and disinfect your particular business or storefront. If things work out, we’ll come in and clean it for you. Once we clean it for you, we can certify that it’s been cleaned and disinfected. That’s probably where it ends because as soon as you open back in and have the public back in, there’s nothing we can do about that.”
