Billings, Montana — In Billings, record rains over the weekend caused hundreds of homes to flood. As a result, phone volume has skyrocketed at businesses like Newman Restoration and Cleaning and Alpha Omega Disaster Restoration.
On Sunday morning, Newman Restoration and Cleaning removed a basement’s worth of water from a West End residence. The firm visited a lot of residences over the weekend, and this was just one of them.
“We’ve had 99 phone calls and then we have 70 active jobs going between commercial floods and residential floods,” said CEO of Newman Restoration and Cleaning, Andrew Newman.
Late on Friday night, according to Newman, calls started coming in and didn’t stop.
“In the eight years that I’ve been in the industry, (this was) by far the worst flooding caused by a rainstorm that I’ve been involved with,” Newman said.
For the sake of keeping up, his team is putting in 15-hour days. It serves as a reminder of what occurred in Red Lodge last summer, according to Newman.
“I’m going to be honest. In 24 hours, we took on twice as many calls, twice as many jobs as Red Lodge,” said Newman.
Levi Gray, the manager of Alpha Omega Disaster Restoration’s repairs department, feels the same way.
“Red Lodge was devastating. There was a large number of calls for that, but this event totally makes that pale in comparison,” Gray said.
Since Thursday, Alpha Omega has started constructing a structure at the City College.
“We had crews going from nine o’clock that night until three or four in the morning. Get a couple of hours of sleep, come back in about eight o’clock Friday morning, and continue on through the day,” said Gray.
Both businesses seek to assist as many people as they can during a time when they are most in need, despite the laborious nature of the task.
“Most importantly, we just take it very seriously. When somebody’s at their breaking point or at their worst, we want to come in at our best and be there for them,” Newman said.
