Salon Owner Walloped By Sandy Had 'Fish From River' In Basement

While most of Riverhead emerged relatively unscathed by Sandy's wrath, at least one Main Street businesses was drowning in storm-related woes.

Ray Pickersgill, owner of the Robert James Salon and Spa and president of the Riverhead Business Improvement District, said the weeks after Sandy's wrath were extremely difficult.

"We were knocked out of business for a month," he said. All of his electric was wiped out when raging floodwaters from the swollen Peconic River burst through a basement window.

"The six-and-a-half foot tide blew right through," he said. "The water in the parking lot had no place to go. We needed three, 30-yard dumpsters to clean out the debris from the basement, and some of it was fish from the river."

When the water reached the front of the building, it blew out the electric and melted the wires, Pickersgill said; he was the only person on East Main Street affected, and "LIPA wasn't going to come out for just one business. I had to wait two weeks for them to finally show up," he said.

After Sandy, customers such as Gabrielle Bradford had been trying to reach the salon for days to make an appointment.

But no one answered the phone, she said, and emails went unanswered, leaving her to wonder if the salon and spa had gone out of business.

Nothing could have been further from the truth, said Margaret Pickersgill, who owns the business with her husband, Ray. 

"It was hell," she said. "We had no power -- no phones, no computers, nothing, nothing, nothing."

And, she added, theirs was the only building affected for such a lengthy period of time. "It was because we had so much water in the basement, the wires were fried."

The weeks without power dealt a financial blow. "We had no income," she said.