Hurricane Ian: Damage assessment begins in hard-hit Daytona Beach Shores

In Daytona Beach Shores, residents and business owners on Friday started the long process of picking up the pieces from major damage left behind by Ian’s torturously slow two-day trek through Volusia County.

“I’ve never seen a catastrophe like this,” said Chris Pappas, owner of Pappas Plaza, the strip of stores that had its windows blown out and roof torn off by Ian in the 2500 block of South Atlantic Avenue in Daytona Beach Shores. “I’ve lived here for close to 40 years. This is incredible.”

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On Friday, Pappas and owners of businesses in the plaza — a list that includes Stroud’s BBQ and the Tres Leches Café restaurants, Aloha Laundry and Carmine’s Pizzeria — had the first chance to assess the damage, as bridges from the mainland reopened.

Some of them had seen pictures and videos of the storm’s assault on social media on Thursday, but others who were in the dark at home without electricity were getting their first glimpse on Friday.

“We were sitting in the dark on Thursday,” said Bart DeLosh, owner of the Aloha Laundry, a business investment that he opened two years ago. “We were out of power. I had to wait until the bridge was open this morning to come over and see the damages.”

The sight was heartbreaking. The shattered remains of plate glass windows were strewn throughout the laundromat, the sidewalk and parking lot. Inside, an unobstructed view of the cloudless blue sky had been left behind after the roof had been blown away.

“I’m trying to get a hold of the insurance company,” said DeLosh, who also works as a construction project manager. “We’re taking some pictures, cleaning up.”

DeLosh estimated that it could cost as much as $250,000-$300,000 to complete repairs that include the roof, windows, replacement of nearly four dozen industrial washers and dryers. Surveying the debris, he had no timetable for how long that might take, but approached the challenge with determination.

“This is America,” he said. “We will rebuild and come back stronger. We’ll never give up.”

Nearby, Pat Patsyiennaco stood amid the shattered glass, overturned chairs and rain-soaked chunks of drywall in his newly opened restaurant, Carmine’s Pizzeria.

“It’s a shame,” he said. “We just opened six months ago. We spent so much money moving in here, at least $100,000-plus.

"I built it from scratch, the ceilings, the ADA-compliant bathrooms. We have the best pizza oven that money can buy. We were just starting to get our name out there and now this happens. I would never have thought that it would be this bad.”

Patsyiennaco first heard about the storm damage from his stepson, who called from Orlando as he was watching TV news coverage.

“He called me and said, ‘I’m looking at the news and they are showing your plaza, and all the windows are blown out,’” Patsyiennaco said. “I told him, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ I expected one window to be gone, but not like this. It’s a disaster.”

At Sunglow Pier, owner hopes to rebuild

Farther south on State Road A1A, employees of Crabby Joe’s restaurant gathered near the entrance to Sunglow Pier, where Ian’s rains and wind washed away part of the popular longtime family-owned restaurant along with the western end of the pier.

“It definitely is a family,” said George Notaras, 34, of the four dozen or so workers at Crabby Joe’s.

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Notaras, who grew up on the beachside, has worked as a Crabby Joe’s server for six years and has been coming to the pier to surf, fish and hang out for much of his life.

“Me and my wife got married on this pier,” said Notaras, who had hoped the damage photos that he had seen on social media were hoaxes.

“When I first heard, we thought that maybe it was a lie, a doctored photo, or maybe not as bad as it looks, but it’s pretty bad,” he said. “It’s going to be a long time, I think, before they get it fixed.”

The biggest damage to the pier and restaurant appears to be in the outdoor dining area and bait shop, said Alex Barshay, director of operations for Blickman Properties Inc., owner of the pier and restaurant.

"We probably lost about 150-200 feet of the pier," he said.

The intention is to rebuild, Barshay said on Friday, but it’s too soon to know what that might involve.

“We love this place,” Barshay said. “I grew up here. But until we get out there, we can’t tell what we’re looking at.

“The first thing we need to do is get the city out to inspect the property, then get the guys that do our piling work to come out and inspect it, give us an idea of what needs to be done,” he said. “We’re going to do the best we can.”

Ian also took aim at Sun Viking Lodge

Clean-up and minor damage repair also started on Friday at the 91-room Sun Viking Lodge, a beachside hotel fixture for more than 50 years in Daytona Beach Shores. The hotel’s iconic illuminated sign was bent toward the ocean at a 45-degree angle on Friday, although the towering Viking statue next to it was undamaged.

“Isn’t that crazy?” said Amy Alexon, the hotel’s general manager. “Our Viking is holding up the fort.”

Elsewhere on the property, Ian’s wind and rain blew out several windows, soaked carpets in virtually all the rooms, knocked exterior panels off the hotel’s tower and washed away the hotel stairs to the beach, Alexon said.

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“We took a beating, but we’ll recover,” she said. “We can get the water out; we can fix the windows; everything is fixable. We’ll recover, yes, we will.”

About half a dozen Sun Viking guests rode out the storm at the hotel, including Judy McLinn, 79, who was in the midst of a three-month visit with her husband from Indianapolis.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” McLinn said. “We had water coming in through the doors, through the windows, through the AC unit. It sounded like a freight train.”

In darkness without power in the couple’s first-floor room, McLinn recalls seeing the curtains moving next to the window as the storm swirled outside.

“At first, I thought it was the air-conditioning, but then I said, ‘It can’t be the AC, because we don’t have power,’” she said. “It was the wind outside.”

One of the panels that was blown off the façade of the hotel’s tower smashed out the back window of the couple’s van in the parking lot, she said.

“So our van is flooded,” she said. “We’ve been coming here for 35 years, and this is the worst thing we’ve ever seen. But we’re still coming back next year.”

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Ian slams Daytona Beach Shores as damage assessment begins