How to help now: These are the mothers in our neighborhoods

Linda and Claudio Marini and their partners Adriana and Stefano Barbagallo are the owners of Barbarini Mercato.  Barbarini’s opened seven years ago at a time when Seaport was a newly developed area of Manhattan that residents were just starting to call home.   Before long though, Barbarini’s was a neighborhood hub, the kind of place where you stop on your way home to pick up the fixings for a really good Italian dinner or where you dine-in a couple times per week because it feels like home.  It’s where you go to get the good olive oil or a special bottle of wine or a comfort food fix like spaghetti with green beans and pignoli.  That is, it’s where you used to go.  It’s gone now, washed away by Hurricane Sandy. 

Linda and Christy’s friendship has grown since their children were in preschool together. Supporting Every Mother Counts right from the start, Linda appeared in our No Mothers Day PSA last spring.  That’s why EMC made supporting Linda’s family and  restaurant a focal point for our Team-EMC volunteer effort last Sunday in place of running the marathon. 

Linda describes the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  “We were evacuated before Sandy hit, but no one knew how bad the destruction would be.  Seaport is located on a low-point of Manhattan.  The Financial Distrct and City Hall are all up hill.  That’s why we suffered so much loss. Barbarini’s was hit by eight feet of water that washed through the restaurant and all the homes and businesses around us.  When it washed back out, it took everything with it.  Pots and pans and pieces of furniture were floating down the street in the next block.  Tables were buckled.  The refrigerator was cooked.  The entire inventory, the cheeses, wine, fresh foods, everything on the shelves…everything was destroyed.  It’s not just a mess, it’s devastation.” 

Volunteers have come from all over to help pull down the sopping dry wall, gather the few intact bottles of wine, oil and water and create what order they can out of the mess.  Linda says, “I’m overwhelmed by how kind people have been, how generous they’ve been to us.  Our neighbors, friends, even strangers have helped with the clean up, brought food and done more for us than I ever imagined anyone could.  Christy took my kids this weekend so we could dig out.  Our dentist brought dinner in. I’m so grateful for this kind of help.  I’m not used to it though.”  One can tell, it’s Linda who’s usually the one lending the helping hand. 

I asked Linda how people could help her now and her voice grew weary. Then the worry pushed its way through in a flood of its own.  “At the very beginning, we were in emergency-mode and it was all about clean up. There was no power, no water.  At this point, I’m trying to figure things out about paperwork, insurance claims and where to go from here. This is the hard part and we aren’t getting any help with insurance providers or any answers about what kind of claims to file and where we can go to get help. People haven’t called us back.  We don’t know what the next step is. Nobody down here has flood insurance.  That wasn’t even an option. We’re a small business and we don’t know what to do to move forward. It would be naïve to think this kind of disaster wouldn’t happen again. I mean, first there was Hurricane Irene, now Sandy. Do we even rebuild?  It has been so frustrating because we haven’t had any media attention to draw city officials in to help us.  Over the weekend a City Council member and a public advocate took notice and there was a City Hall meeting to give us information about resources available for businesses, but it’s all just taking so much time.  And in the meantime, we’re out of business; our employees are out of work. We’re all at a loss.  It doesn’t look like we’ll be eligible for any grants, just loans. At this point, our landlord doesn’t want anyone to make any plans to rebuild because a disaster like this can happen again.  It’s so discouraging and frustrating.  I won’t give up and we’ll just take it one step at a time, one day at a time, but right now, those days don’t look good.”

Countless businesses like Linda and Claudio’s are facing this type of despair, confusion and frustration.  When I asked Linda what we could write that would be the most help she said, “I don’t even know.  The clean up is essentially done.  The kind of help we need now is expert advice on what to do next? I’m open to good advice from people who really know what to do. Do we walk away?  Do we rebuild?  What do we do?”

In a sense, it’s easy to clean up trash and drywall, but when the volunteers are gone and businesses are still closed, the real heavy lifting requires the kind of volunteerism only a select few know how to provide.  If you know the answer to questions like Linda’s and have expert services to offer, reach out to the small businesses in your community and lend a hand.  If you know how to help Linda and Claudio take the next steps for Barbarini’s Mercato, contact them through our Facebook page.