Disaster aid ripples far from ground zero 62 Phila.-area firms get $10.6 million from SBA. SBA's help reaches far beyond ground zero

Champion Fasteners was ensnared in the Sept. 11 disaster even though it is 80 miles and a dozen New Jersey Turnpike exits south of New York.

Many of the Lumberton, Burlington County, company's customers were businesses that took a body blow from the World Trade Center attacks. Some built airplane sub-assemblies, others manufactured durable goods in the New York area, yet others were in electric power and put off maintenance work so they could address security concerns.

At Champion, sales slowed by nearly 25 percent, inventories of unsold nuts, bolts and other fasteners built up, and payables to suppliers backed up nearly 35 percent in the two months following the attacks. "Everybody was calling to be paid," said Robert Santare, Champion's president.

Then he saw a notice of a January meeting at the Camden County Library in Voorhees where applications for emergency Small Business Administration loans were to be distributed.

Santare's partner, Aldo Magazzeni, went, and their company sought $450,000 to cover lost sales and delayed payables. In April, Champion received $407,600.

In all, 62 small businesses in the eight-county Philadelphia area have received similar SBA assistance, for $10.6 million in "expanded economic injury disaster loans."

This week, the SBA said the program was being extended until Sept. 30.

"We just want to make sure that as many businesses as possible get this money," said Carol Chastang, an SBA spokeswoman in Washington.

Champion used $300,000 of its loan to pay suppliers.

"Our suppliers like to get paid in 30 to 45 days. Some of them were not paid for four months," Santare said. They remained patient because Champion had been loyal to them.

Through it all, Santare and Magazzeni, the chief executive, held on to the 40 employees of the company, which in each of the last couple of years has had about $5 million in sales.

Usually, the SBA's disaster-loan program focuses on businesses in the immediate vicinity of the calamity: 4,777 businesses in the New York-North Jersey-Connecticut area have received a total of $390.5 million in loans, and 99 in Virginia have received $13.8 million - all resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and outside Washington.

The expanded program - for a maximum of $1.5 million per eligible business - is the first to treat businesses across the nation as potential victims of a disaster. Nationwide, nearly 3,600 companies have received a total of $372.5 million in loans.