EMERSON, N.J. -

When Hurricane Irene bore through the East Coast this past weekend, her geographical footprint was as broad as her wrath.

The storm ran from the Southeast all the way up to New England, causing power outages, massive flooding and reportedly more than two-dozen casualties, if not more.

Irene impacted everything from clogging roads and crushing piers to affecting homes and businesses — including auto dealers, who continue to feel her sting. Auto Remarketing sought out interviews with several dealers Monday to find out how their businesses fared.

One such dealer was Rick DeSilva, owner of two New Jersey stores and 2010 chairman of the American International Automobile Dealers Association.

On Monday morning, DeSilva was standing in the showroom of his Liberty Subaru store — located not far outside of New York City in the town of Emerson, N.J.  — with no power, not knowing when the electricity might flick back on. Meanwhile, his Liberty Hyundai store in Mahwah was open, but a log-jam on the nearby Interstate 287 was keeping most shoppers away.

Fortunately, DeSilva experienced no facility or vehicle damage — having moved vehicles away from buildings ahead of time and removing anything that could fly around. He said that dealers in his area were open and faring OK.

“(We’re) trying to figure out when we may get electricity back,” DeSilva told Auto Remarketing in regards to the Subaru store. “The funny part about it is, I came down here (Sunday) after the initial storm … I came to both places and I said to myself, ‘Man we missed this bullet; we did OK.’ A little leak here, some debris hanging around … but then I guess the back end of the storm came through later on in the day and the trees (were) down, the water was all over the place.”

DeSilva said of his Hyundai store: “We’re fully functional, but the drawback is we’re so close to the New York state border … the New York throughway is just not even a mile up the road from us. So the traffic is backed all the way up past the store, so we might as well be out of business for the day at both stores.”

In and around the nation’s capital, DARCARS Automotive Group executive vice president Tamara Darvish said seven of the dealer group’s 25 stores were without power Sunday, and three had no power on Monday.

Darvish is keeping at least partial staff  at each of her stores.

“We’re keeping enough to be able to accommodate our customers,” Darvish said. “With the electronics of our switchboard, we’re able to move phone calls from one location to another, so we’ve moved some of the receptionists around to handle incoming calls.”

As far as damage goes, DARCARS managed to escape without much harm at all.

“We had one dealership that we had some water damage at. We lost a really, really big sales day, but when you look at it, nobody got hurt,” she added. “That’s a very, very small price to pay (compared to) catastrophes that have happened around the world in the last six months that really kind of keep things like this in perspective.”

As far other stores in the region, Darvish found that most dealers in the D.C. area were “up and running or close to it.”

Further south, Riverside Chrysler Jeep Dodge in the eastern North Carolina town of New Bern was experiencing some challenges stemming from Irene, as well. In fact, because of the store’s phone service being out, the call to the store from Auto Remarketing on Monday had to be re-routed to the cell phone of Internet manager Chris Tousely.

The store had signage damage and lost power lines, phone service and Internet connection.

Tousely said the store had “very minimal” vehicle damage, saying that “maybe one or two (were damaged) just from signs hitting them.” Other than the signs, there was no facility damage.

Riverside was open on Monday but was shut down Saturday when the storm was passing through North Carolina and had to close early on Friday, meaning the store lost potential sales.

“It’s the last Saturday of the month, so that’s at least 15 cars between Friday and Saturday that were lost,” Tousely pointed out.

Also in North Carolina, a dealership in the eastern town of Belhaven reportedly had its roof tore off by the tornado that hit prior to Irene’s arrival.  A bit further west, Marshall Crumpler at Cox Dodge Chrysler Jeep in Wilson said from what he could tell, dealers in his area were in good shape.

“I’ve looked at all the dealers, and the only thing we’ve had here is just a couple of trees uprooted, small decorative trees uprooted,” said Crumpler.

On the auction front, Auto Remarketing also reached out to various auctions in the affected areas.

As of press time, Manheim responded and here is what executive vice president for U.S. operations Mike Broe had to say: “While some areas including New York and New England experienced significant flooding and power outages, we are fortunate to report that most of our locations experienced minimal impact.

"Our sale (Tuesday) at Manheim NY Metro Skyline in New Jersey has been cancelled due to flooding in the area that has prevented customer access to our location," he added. "The location plans to host their regular Thursday night sale later this week. Otherwise, it’s business as usual for us, and we wish our neighbors and colleagues the same.”