“The phones are ringing off the hook,” said Rob Winkle, the Chief Financial Officer at Roof Asset Management. Winkle says in the last 24-hours his company has received over 200 phone calls. Although its nothing in comparison to the inquiries he got after Tropical Storm Hilary. During that week, Roof Asset Management answered nearly 1,000 phone calls.
“A lot of roofs started leaking after Hilary, and a lot of those roofs have been repaired. But when you have that soaking type of rain, that we had on Monday, that’s when roofs start to leak. It doesn’t have to rain real hard, it just has to rain for a long period of time,” Winkle said. His company employs around 100 people, and on Tuesday morning every single one of those workers was out on a job.
Carmen Becerra, Owner of Bercerra Brothers Roofing, also noticed an uptick in calls.
“We are a smaller company, about ten employees including myself, and we got at least 50 calls today. And that’s not including the messages I returned last night,” Becerra said. She noticed many of the calls her company got this rainy season were from people who own vacation homes in the valley.
“It’s usually people that haven’t been home for a while, so they come home to like stains in the roof. Maybe even little puddles, or tiles that are lifted or possibly some skylights that are a little bit cracked,” said Becerra. She says they key to preventing leaky roofs is continued maintenance throughout the year, which is why people that live here part-time tend to have more problems than year-round residents.
“It’s just you know, a lot of lack of maintenance, not knowing that you have an issue with your roof sometimes because you’re gone for several months, or event the mindset of ‘I’ll tend to it later,'” said Becerra. “It’s more procrastination and lack of maintenance that we’re seeing right now.”
Both companies say you can give them a call if you notice any damage or water inside your home. However, they both ask that you practice patience and kindness with such a high volume of calls coming in.
“It takes a long time to get to all homes, you know, that’s the biggest thing when you have hundreds of calls,” says Winkle. “There’s a lot of roofing contractors out here, and we are doing our very best, but it’s not like dropping off TV sets. It takes a long time to repair things and we work on a first come first serve basis. Sometimes it’s a few weeks before we can get there, and unfortunately, it rains in between, but we’d like to get to everybody as quick as possible so please be patient.”
kesq.com
https://kesq.com/top-stories/2024/01/23/local-roofing-companies-slammed-with-hundreds-of-calls-after-storm-hits-the-coachella-valley/
