CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
A Waialua homeowner hammered down roof tiles Wednesday amid high winds. The storm caused widespread damage to roofs here -- and a business boost for roofing companies.
Roofs blown away
mean business spike
for isle roofers
The phones began ringing Wednesday morning at Oahu's roofing contractor offices even before the full force of the storm was felt all over the island.
"(Wednesday) morning, when I got to my office, I was bombarded," said Bill Hale, owner of Five Star Roofing LLC, which handles residential and commercial roofing.
"It wasn't windy yet downtown, but then I started to get calls about roofs being blown off. At first I wondered what was going on, and then it started here. The majority was Kailua and Kaneohe, then in Wahiawa, where a church roof had blown off," he said.
Oahu's roofers say the storm caused a wide range of damage to island roofs.
"We had two crews working," said Stu Gregory, operations manager for Akamai Roofing Inc. "They couldn't service everyone. There was too much property damage. I hadn't seen damages like this except in small hurricanes and tornadoes."
Calls ranged from bits and pieces of roofs missing to, in some cases, the whole roof or a garage roof gone, said Rusty Tauaefa, salesman with RSI Roofing & Building Supply.
"We are busy. We've got customers coming in with samples, saying, 'Please, can you match this, my roof blew away,'" he said.
Hawaii's property and casualty insurers also are hearing from their clients.
At State Farm, the largest insurer of homes in the state, the calls started immediately, said spokeswoman Carolyn Fujioka.
"Claims are still coming in, so we don't have a good idea yet," Fujioka said. "It's in the hundreds, but it's still too early to tell how far it will go."
With all the calls, Fujioka said, the company has set up a special phone number for storm-related damage claims. It is 800-732-5246.
"We did set up a special number, but we still urge people to call their agent about damage," she said. "If they have trouble getting through, they can call that number."
The cost of fixing a roof will depend on the degree of damage.
"Emergency repairs are normally $400 to $500, but that's just temporary, so it could be $1,000 for a repair up to $10,000 or $15,000 for a full-on roof," said Akamai's Gregory.
Wednesday's rain and wind came at a time of year that is usually not busy for roofers.
"This time of year -- November to April -- is traditionally very slow for roofers," said Five Star Roofing's Hale.
"People usually wait until after taxes and into the summer," he said. "But this year it peaked, so there won't be a slow season for everyone."
The storm also highlighted just how many badly installed roofs there are on Oahu, Hale and other roofers said.
"A lot of these roofs should never have come off; that's the sad part," Hale said.
"What I saw (Wednesday) and what my men saw was that a lot of the reason roofs were blowing off was not because the roof was old," he said. "New roofs came off, too. The more we looked, the more we noticed things like not enough nails, so I'd say workmanship can be attributed to part of it."
Use of quality materials also is important, Hale said.
"It's not the roof on top -- the shake or the shingle -- it's the underlayment, the black paper. It's also using stainless steel for fasteners, nails and screws vs. something that will rust," he said.
Gregory said a lot of damage can be attributed to new roofs being placed over existing roofs, the wrong product for the wrong roof or improper installation.
"In order to save money, people don't tear it off," Gregory said. "But most damage you see is when a roof is put over another roof. Starting from scratch, you don't have as much damage."
Re-roofing an average-size house should take two to three days given an adequate number of workers on the job, Hale said. But because of increased demand over the next few weeks, it could take longer than usual to get an appointment, he said.
