By William Schertz, Tire Business staff
WATERTOWN, Mass. (April 19, 2013) — Police closed down parts of the Boston metro area Friday in the wake of a violent late-night shootout with two brothers suspected of carrying out bombings at the Boston Marathon on April 15.
As a result of the shutdown, residents of Watertown and many of the surrounding areas were told to remain in their homes, while local businesses were forced to remain closed as police launched a large-scale manhunt for Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two suspects. His elder brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a firefight with police early in the morning of April 19.
While the shutdown came as a surprise to many, Direct Tire & Auto Service's Watertown location employees were notified bright and early that they would have the day off, according to CEO Barry Steinberg, who said he began making plans before the directive went out.
"My CFO and I decided this morning to just send a message to everyone to stay home," he told Tire Business. "We followed up with phone calls and we networked. We basically told everybody to call everybody. If you get this message don't be afraid to call your buddy in case he doesn't get our message."
Direct Tire implemented its emergency shutdown process in order to plan for hurricanes and bad snow storms, which have led to citywide shutdowns in the past, Mr. Steinberg said. Some of the Watertown employees went to Direct Tire's other locations to help out, but most were unable to leave their homes due to residents being told by city, state and law enforcement officials to stay in their homes with doors locked.
Mr. Steinberg noted that since the bombings, the atmosphere in Boston has been very somber, and that the bombings have left a black mark on what is otherwise a very special day for Boston residents.
"It's a celebration day," he said of the running of the marathon on what is dubbed "Patriots Day."
"Win, lose or draw, people from all over the world come here," Mr. Steinburg said. "It's always been a peaceful celebration where it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from or how fast you run—you go to the event and it's just a party.
"It's always been one of our best days, and now it's going to be our own 9/11. We'll do it next year, we'll be stronger and our security will be better, but it's just a scar on a beautiful event."
Mr. Steinberg said he considers himself lucky to have not been personally acquainted with any of the victims of the bombing, but he knows people who are. "Boston's a pretty small town. It's a city, but we call it a town," he said.
Mr. Steinberg, who lives only five blocks from where the bombings took place, said he did have his own scare that day.
"Every year my son Matt comes in and he and his kids and my wife walk over to watch the marathon. This year, there was such a crowd, and it was such a beautiful day…they said, 'You know what? Let's just go to the park today.'"
Mr. Steinberg said his wife was back home and his son back on the road before the bombs went off, but he was unable to reach his family in the aftermath.
"We couldn't get a hold of her because cell phone service went down," he said. "My daughter who lives in New York couldn't get a hold of anybody, my son couldn't get a hold of anybody, so everybody was in this panic around that 3 o'clock hour, but thank God everyone was fine."
Right now, Mr. Steinberg said the dealership is simply waiting to hear if it will be allowed to reopen on Saturday, April 20.
"I don't know about tomorrow, but quite candidly, if I'm losing today and tomorrow, that's a loss of $45,000 in sales. I do about $22,000 a day out of Watertown. That's a lot of business—a lot of tires."
But Mr. Steinberg said he believes a lot of that lost business will find its way back to the shop.
"It's not like a restaurant where if they don't come you'll never sell that meal again. People are going to reschedule," he said. "I've already heard from some folks saying, 'Let's talk tomorrow or Monday and we'll reschedule.' These are our customers, so hopefully they're not going anywhere else.
"We're committed to them and they're committed to us, but we're still losing those two days of business, and are we going to get it all back? Probably not," he continued.
"If somebody was coming in for a brake job today because their brakes were grinding, and they were outside the circle of the communities that were closed, they may very well have gone to another facility to get their brakes done without thinking they could go to one of our locations.
"It happens, but at the end of the day there's more important things than just doing business."
_____________________________________________
To reach this reporter: [email protected]; 330-865-6148.