Sarnian Roofing owner Andy Gavey said his company received 700 telephone calls and more than 200 emails in the nine hours after the storm, double the volume of when Storm Ciaran battered the island in November 2023.
‘Its been manic, the busiest day we have ever had,’ he said yesterday afternoon.
‘We had five people in at 6am to man the phones, and the emails started coming in during the night. Normally we get one or two enquiries a day.
‘Even with five of us here most of the calls went to voicemail. With all the damage we are asking people to email in photos so we can prioritise.’
However he warned that it could take seven or eight months to clear the backlog.
‘We have 30 guys but they are normally busy on major projects,’ he said.
‘We can only take them off for a short while.
‘We are warning people missing one or two tiles that they are going to have to wait. We had one team on Storm Ciaran damage and that took a year to clear. We are planning to have two teams for Goretti.’
He said the worst damage his team had seen today was a call from a woman at L’Ancresse whose whole roof had been lifted up and the roof timbers bent on her chimney.
‘It was so bad there was very little we could do,’ he said. ‘The whole thing will need to be rebuilt.’
As for the roof of his own house, Mr Gavey said that had survived unscathed.
‘It’s fine. I did a proper good job on it.’
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