When water from Hurricane Sandy started entering his basement in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, Ross Blair's gut reaction was to put down things like towels. But soon, he realized that this wouldn't help and the safest thing to do was to turn the power off.

"Then that's it. Let it take its course," he said. Three feet of water eventually flooded his basement. "There's no one to contact."

He didn't sleep much the night of the hurricane because he was worried about trees falling on his house and the noise from the wind—which got up to 115 miles per hour in some places.

In the morning, Blair realized there wasn't much he could do at home, but knew he could help more in other places because, for him, this event was both personal and professional. Blair's company, Rain for Rent, provides and operates pumping equipment that can remove floodwater.

"I had a real strange feeling that there was more that I could do in New York to pump out certain locations than I could do back home," said Blair.

That morning, Blair drove about 50 miles northwest to Linden, New Jersey, where he mobilized pumping equipment to remove flood water from tunnels, underground subway stations, and other locations in New York City.

"We had never gone through anything this powerful on the East Coast. At least in the 17 years I've been here, nothing's ever been at this magnitude," said Blair, who is originally from Scotland.

Rain for Rent had been contacted by many companies that day. "We had to prioritize. What is the most important thing that we can do today?" Blair recalled. "And that was to work with Con Edison." The power grid infrastructure that connects Con Edison was completely underwater, and they needed to pump our water in these substations and underneath sewer holes. Hurricane Sandy had cut power to 8.1 million homes in the United States, and Lower Manhattan was completely without power. It was "a really, really eerie sight," Blair said. "Imagine Manhattan with no power whatsoever."

After his company worked for close to two days with Con Edison, and got the power grid infrastructure restored, they were contacted by contractors working for the Army Corps of Engineers to determine how much equipment and personnel they had around the country that they could move to a military base in New Jersey, and then deploy to New York City. They set up a command center in a hotel in New Jersey, where they used cell satellite communication because cell service was down.

"As you can imagine, you're actually talking to the Pentagon, people there… it's quite daunting," said Blair. "We realized only then the gravity of all these phone calls we were getting."

Within 24 to 48 hours, they were transporting equipment—such as tanks and generators—and personnel from all over the country to the military base. Blair was doing the inventory, and had to check that each piece of equipment had arrived and was in good and working order. Then they worked to see where each piece of equipment would go and if it would work in that specific location.

The next step was to begin pumping out tunnels, underground subways, and other locations, such as the National September 11 Memorial Museum, which had been completely filled with water. "It looks like the infrastructure was never designed for that intake of water," said Blair.

The tunnels were not designed to have water pressure in them, so the water had to be pumped out slowly to ensure that more strain wasn't put on the infrastructure. The goal was to engineer a safe way of removing the water. Blair's team had to be conscious of the debris that could have accumulated during the storm, and had to have safety and health talks before every shift change.

Blair is concerned about how New York City's infrastructure will fare in the next big storm.

"I don't know what it's going to take," he said of the need for infrastructure upgrades. He said there is a lot of talk right after an event, and then it's forgotten about.

They were in New York City for about a month. "We probably pumped out a tunnel within a week, but that's the easy part. Then you have to have crews go in there to clean everything out, and put all the electric and pumps into place again," said Blair.

Blair was then able to return home and focus on his house. He had been gone a month, with only infrequent visits. While the water was able to drain out of their basement four days after Hurricane Sandy, it took months to get their property back to how it was before the hurricane.

"You have a flood, which is traumatic enough, and then it's everything that comes with it," he said.

His children were able to sleep at various neighbors' homes until the power came back on almost a week after the storm. There they had heat, they could shower, and the refrigerated food had not gone bad. "You rely on the community to help you out," said Blair.

The furniture in their basement was destroyed. Blair tried to use a wood fire to dry out the water, but it wasn't that effective. His wife and son struggled with asthma, making the mold all the more dangerous. The experience made him realize that the flooding was now a health issue.

"I don't think a lot of people really appreciate things like global warming and how it really affects them," he said. "It doesn't affect you until it really affects you, on a personal note."