Chamber Surveying Impact of Derecho on Falls Church Businesses

The that blew through Northern Virginia the night of June 29 took a big bite out of several businesses in “The Little City.”

Some restaurants had to get rid of a lot of inventory and were out of business for several days.

To assess the financial damage, the launched an online survey to see just how much of an impact the storm had on local businesses.

“We’re compiling numbers now to give to the insurance company,” said Rebecca Tax, co-owner of and . “We lost almost everything.”

The chamber launched the online survey Tuesday. Sally Cole, executive director of the chamber, said they’re doing the survey now to see what kind of damages businesses in Falls Church are dealing with.

Information collected from the survey may be compiled by the end of the week, she said. Cole said the hardest hit businesses were the restaurants and their employees.

From Saturday through Wednesday, the lights at Lazy Sundae and Mike’s Deli remained off while Dominion Power crews worked to restore power to Northern Virginia. Tax, who co-owns the two businesses with her brother David, said she and her staff started cleaning the stores and restocking the freezers as soon as power was restored. She said she couldn’t imagine how much new small businesses were affected by the loss of merchandise and goods.

“We’re going to recover but it was painful,” Tax said.

Rachid Elkhasouani, manager at  in Falls Church said his store was without power from June 30 through July 2. Everything is fine now but Elkhasouani said he lost a lot of walk in business those days and an undetermined amount of catering business. The store didn’t take a big hit replacing groceries because when power went out, workers stored uncooked goods in a nearby Red Hot & Blue.

“We didn’t throw everything out because we moved things to another location that’s nearby,” Elkhasouani said.

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