If you work in the Fox Valley, you know what this looks like: a phone that hasn't stopped ringing since July and a schedule full into next year.
Nearly three months after an EF3 tornado cut through the heart of the Fox Cities, one Neenah contractor laid out the numbers in plain terms, and they're sobering. Shane Rosenow, who owns Rosenow Customs, told FOX 11 meteorologist Audrey Leigh in a report on the long road to recovery that the rebuild will likely take "probably 2-3 years of non-stop working" before things feel normal again.
The Storm Behind the Backlog
The tornado hit on July 27. According to the National Weather Service office in Green Bay, it spun up around noon in the Appleton area and moved south through Fox Crossing and Menasha, with estimated peak winds around 140 mph, before reaching Lake Winnebago. It damaged many homes and businesses before dissipating over the lake around 12:22 p.m.
FOX 11 reports that more than 2,000 homes across the Fox Valley need repairs. That's a lot of roofs, windows and siding for one region's crews.
From Five Calls a Week to Five Calls an Hour
Rosenow said demand surged right after the storm. His company went from getting about five to ten calls a week to five to ten calls an hour. Since July, Rosenow Customs has repaired more than 40 homes, but he said the work keeps piling up.
He has more than 71 jobs in approved status, and he said that number undersells it. Most of those are roof, window and siding jobs, so in his words, "you can already triple that number."
Here's how his timelines look right now, as he described them:
- Roofs are about 10 to 15 weeks out, depending on the type of roof.
- Windows are pushed to spring of next year.
- Siding will run through this winter and into next spring.
His crews plan to keep working through the winter months.
Racing the Cold
The biggest headache, Rosenow said, is the work that simply won't get done before temperatures drop. Windows are the main one.
Getting windows in before winter, he told FOX 11, "is not going to happen," so his crews "have to come up with a solution to make them airtight for the winter."
Anybody who's done storm work up north knows what that means: temporary weatherproofing now, and a second trip back later.
It's the People, Not the Product
Here's the part that will sound familiar to just about every contractor in the country. Rosenow said the holdup isn't materials. It's hands.
"It's industry-wide here. It's not even a material issue. It's more of there's not enough skilled laborers," he said. He described an industry that has been "suffering for the last decade plus," as experienced tradespeople have aged out, retired or left the work. "You just don't want anybody just throwing stuff on your house," he added.
He also spoke to the gap between what customers expect and what crews can physically do.
"We want to get it done fast, but we just physically can't do the work that fast," Rosenow said. Customers understand the community went through something big, he said, "but they don't understand to the extent of how bad it is and how much work there is."
"It'll never recover 100%. It's never going to look the same way," he said. But on the rebuild itself, he's figuring two to three years.
Why it matters for Contractors
If you're in northeast Wisconsin, this is your next couple of years. With more than 2,000 homes needing work and local crews already booked months out, there's room for more qualified roofing, window and siding contractors, but as Rosenow put it, homeowners don't want just anybody on their house. Doing it right and keeping customers in the loop matters as much as speed.
Winter planning is the immediate job. Openings that won't get permanent windows until spring need to be sealed up tight now, and that work has to be scheduled, priced and explained to homeowners and insurers alike.
And for contractors everywhere, Rosenow's comments are a reminder of where the real bottleneck is. When a disaster hits, the shortage of skilled tradespeople shows up fast. Shops that have been training and holding on to good people are the ones who can actually answer the phone when it starts ringing five to ten times an hour.