Winds, rain put roofers back on job

The high winds and wicked weather that kicked off the month of December sparked a storm of business for roofing contractors in the Reno-Sparks area.

Roofing company executives kept crews busy working overtime the first week of December and also banked big chunks of revenue during a normally soft month.

D&D Roofing and Sheet Metal took more than 500 calls for emergency repairs after the first rainstorm hit the region at the end of November, Vice President Sam Chamberlin says.

As high winds pummeled the Truckee Meadows over the following days, D&D employees scrambled to accommodate frantic homeowners fighting leaking roofs and commercial customers who lost entire sections of their roofs.

Chamberlin says the storm series was the worst in the last four years and increased the companys business almost 1,000 percent from a sluggish November. D&D crews worked the entire weekend of Dec. 1 and 2 responding to service calls.

With new commercial construction being almost nonexistent, it is a big boost for us, Chamberlin says. A lot of people have put off their roofing and repair projects, and when it is leaking on their computer it is more of a priority.

Shawn Sjodin, operations manager for Burke Roofing Inc., says the phone rang steadily through the weekend and swamped the companys staff of about 20 employees. The volume of work was enough that Burke Roofing began pushing callers off to other roofing contractors.

This is the most calls we have gotten, Sjodin says. We have gotten to the point where we cant respond to the calls we are getting we just dont have enough people. We take as many as we can, but there is only so much we can do.

Burke was able to employ a handful of roofers over the weekend that normally would be unemployed, Sjodin says. He expected it would take at least a week of working long hours to catch up to all the service work in the companys queue.

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Winds, rain put roofers back on job