A Pet Food Store Fights to Survive Sandy

When Robert Freed walked into Pet Foods Plus, his flooded store on Midland Avenue in Staten Island, two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, he knew what he smelled immediately: the stench of rotten kibble and cat food, a few tons of it. During good times, that $250,000 worth of inventory was the equivalent of Freed’s bank. Now his windows had been broken, the walls had been pushed in by the storm surge, and his counters and the platform they rested on were gone, washed way up the avenue. His racks and shelves were knocked over, dog food was spread all over the floor, his cat toys and doggie chews soggy and covered in what looked like seaweed.

It was Oct. 31. Rob, 47, and his younger brother Matt, 37, had waited out the storm in New Jersey. Their homes were in the highest-risk, Zone A sections of Staten Island, as was their store. The first morning the Outerbridge Crossing, one of the bridges that connect New Jersey to Staten Island, reopened, they hopped in their cars to check on their store. Rob had gotten calls from friends and neighbors telling him it was on fire, the callers shouting over emergency sirens wailing in the background. He’d dismissed these as the hysterical bulletins of those who were still in a state of shock from the flood. But after crawling across Staten Island—traffic was backed up because the traffic lights were out—he realized that the MetroPCS location next door had indeed gone up in flames. The old, wooden clapboard house was now a charred mess spilling blackened shingles into the street.