Kasper Norkus and Mario Portillo remember driving their College HUNKS vehicles through the Island Park neighborhood in Fort Myers, Florida, following Hurricane Ian in 2022. The streets were littered with debris – water-logged carpet, washing machines, overturned boats, tattered entertainment centers and soaked drywall.
Everyone needed help.
“It literally looked like a landfill there,” said Norkus, who owns the Fort Myers location of College HUNKS Hauling Junk and Moving. “For a mile and a half, you knew going through every turn, there were at least 10 football fields’ worth of furniture, appliances, cabinets and carpet. People were just dragging things out of every home, destroyed.”
It was a similar scene, along with significant flooding, for Jeff Moss in Wilmington, North Carolina, when Hurricane Florence hit the area in 2018. Wilmington received over 23 inches of rain with the storm.
While College HUNKS does specialize in moving, it’s also known for its junk hauling services. Typically, that translates to removing old and discarded items that customers have left over after moving and can be donated or trashed. But what they saw in the aftermath of the hurricanes wasn’t junk. The piles included still-important items of their neighbors’ upended lives, waterlogged and dragged to the curb.
The scenes from both storms were emotional gut punches for the local business owners. It’s something they hope to avoid repeating this year, but NOAA National Weather Service forecasters predict above-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin this year.
This hurricane season, which spans June 1 to Nov. 30, forecasters expect 17 to 25 named storms. Of those, eight to 13 are forecast to become hurricanes, and four to seven, major hurricanes with winds of 111 mph or higher.
“Down here in Fort Myers, we got hit with the eye of that storm,” Norkus recalled. “I don’t know what you could do to prepare for that.”
No Stranger to Disaster
Norkus, Moss and Portillo’s experiences in disaster hauling aren’t uncommon among owners of College HUNKS locations around the country.
One thing that unites them is a collective desire to help their community through their business. But there’s a balance.
After first checking on their teams, Norkus and Moss were out working long days helping their neighbors following the storms.
“You know, it’s really bad,” Portillo said. “It’s heartbreaking to see it. All we can do is go out there and, you know, be selfless with it. We just treat everybody else’s property like it’s our own. There are good people, and you want to treat people as you want to be treated. That’s how we look at it.”
Both Norkus and Moss said that they love helping those who truly need help and try to find them in the community. As small business owners, they have to weigh what they can afford to do since they aren’t set up for specific disaster recovery. There are FEMA programs for that, along with insurance.
“You just have to be smart about picking and choosing where you’re going to be able to get in and help people,” Moss said.
In his experiences with storms, that means helping indigent people through community, veterans and nonprofit charities, he said. “It’s just about vetting the situation. Insurance is there for a reason but not everyone has that. But there’s people who aren’t insured and they’re already barely surviving. Anytime we can try to do something to help somebody like that, that’s what we want to do.”
Post Disaster Cleanup
Cleaning up after an event like a tornado or hurricane, there are steps you can take to protect yourself, your belongings and ways to prevent additional damage.
Wearing the appropriate protective gear, including gloves, comfortable shoes, long sleeves and safety glasses, is a good start following any natural disaster. Power lines, gas leaks and other hazardous materials could be around or hidden under debris and in flood waters.
“It can be dangerous work,” Moss said. “So, we have a lot of involvement there when it comes to safety.”
As you assess the damage in and around your home, identify areas where you will need professional assistance, such as with hazardous materials or structural damage. Companies like College HUNKS can also help haul away other debris and provide you with paperwork you need for insurance claim reimbursement.
Local governments will communicate with you on cleanup plans for organic debris, household trash, damaged appliances and other items. These will all need to be separated regardless of who might be contracted to pick up the material.
Until that help arrives, you can collaborate with neighbors, family or community members to tackle larger debris and make the process more efficient and safer.
“People should be heeding these upcoming storm seasons,” Norkus said. “These storms are really only getting bigger. They’re getting stronger year after year. We got lucky last year, but I don’t think we’re going to be as lucky this year.”