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Louisiana Contractors Battling 'Storm
Chasers' For Work
Most area firms are still in disarray
but some have returned to near capacity while others are fighting
project cancellations and out-of-state competition
By Mary Buckner Powers
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This bridge
in Empire, La., is still closed almost 60 days after Katrina
blew through the area, but contractors are working to
clear the highway.
Robert Kaufmann/FEMA |
All AGC contractors in Louisiana, from small to large, have
a Hurricane Katrina story to tell. Some are harrowing and
some are heroic. But many firms just want the world to know
that they are open for business and ready, willing and able
to help rebuild the region.
Yvette Hebert still hopes she will wake up from the nightmare
and be at home again. She has lived away from home in New
Iberia, La., since the National Guard rescued her six days
after the levees failed and flooded New Orleans. Her father,
Leonard Hebert, CEO and chairman of the board of Professional
Construction Services, New Orleans, didn't know for three
days whether she and her mother were alive.
Hebert, the company's executive vice president, now has the
task of rebuilding the business. "It will take a wing
and a prayer and a lot of phone calls," she says.
The company, a heavy and industrial contractor, is still
trying to locate all of its 55 full-time employees. Some are
back, but many will never come back, says Hebert. With both
landline and cell phone services down, employees could not
call the company. So Hebert used the "buddy system"
to locate the ones who were lost. "If they were in the
same crew, they often knew the other members' friends and
relatives to call," she says.
Hebert is willing to supply housing for the returning workers
if she gets a big enough job, but now she has work only on
a day-to-day basis. Some of her former customers are beginning
to call with bid packages, but many don't plan to do the work
until insurance claims are settled.
The firm lost one 70-ton and four 50-ton cranes from its
equipment yard in Port Bienville, Miss. Many other pieces
of equipment were flooded with salt water.
Starting Over
The company office is still standing, but it's a muddy mess,
sprinkled with pieces of debris as large as a tire. Everything
in Hebert's office went out the window with the floodwaters,
including the plans, specs and contract for a job she was
to begin purchasing materials for the morning after the storm
hit. Adding insult to injury, the water rose again in the
office when Hurricane Rita hit nearly four weeks later.
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The Army
Corps of Engineers is rebuilding this industrial levee
and raising it 10 ft to prevent future flooding.
FEMA, Marvin Nauman |
Despite the difficulties she faces, Hebert is positive about
the future. "It won't be hard times forever," she
says.
Frustration among companies from the New Orleans area is palpable.
Many are having trouble competing for work in their own city,
and they are angry.
Kelly Commander, owner of Command Construction LLC, New Orleans,
lost her office and many of her employees and wants to know
why she and others are having such a hard time getting contracts
to help clean up their city. "We typically do work for
the parishes around New Orleans and for the state department
of transportation," Commander says of her small contracting
firm that does heavy/highway work. But now we can't bid work.
We have to apply."
Cold Shoulder
Commander has applied to every prime contractor hired by
the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency. "But to date I have zero work," says the
owner of a small, minority-owned business. "How can that
be?"
Commander has not so much as received a phone call in response,
she says. She attended the back-to-business seminar held by
federal contractors. "But how to get their work is still
a mystery," she says.
The firm has the trucks needed to remove debris, but many
of the clean-up contractors are from out of state. City Park
is filled with out-of-state campers where out-of-state workers
are living. "They're storm chasers," she says. "Without
work, I worry how our state will recover."
Still, Commander continues to rebuild her work force. All
her supervisory people and about one-third of her laborers
are back. Others don't have homes to come back to and don't
know how to find a place for them to stay, she adds.
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A portion
of St. Bernard Parish was threatened by a massive spill
when a Murphy Oil tank was forced from its foundation
by storm surge.
FEMA/Bob McMillan |
Commander is working to find them housing. The company has
enough work to make its payroll, but is struggling. "If
we don't get our business back to work, we'll collapse,"
she adds. "It's an overwhelming, sad situation."
Even Louisiana's largest contractor, Boh Bros. Construction
Co. LLC, New Orleans, has had trouble navigating the labyrinth
of FEMA procurement. "It's not obvious to us how to get
ahold of those people," says Robert S. Boh, president.
Boh Bros. is well positioned to perform work under federal
contracts, but FEMA continues to go to people who don't normally
work in New Orleans-the storm chasers, he says. "It's
painful to see people from other places working when our peers
are hurting for something to do," Boh says.
The federal government did call on Boh Bros. shortly after
the storm. The Corps of Engineers asked the company to help
plug the city's levees. "We take pride in the fact that
the public agencies call us to respond," Boh said.
But what impressed Boh most was willingness of the company's
employees to respond even though they were forced out of their
own homes and many were from the hardest-hit areas. "Some
are from the 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish, which suffered
the most," he says. "But they put their troubles
aside and fell in line."
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Houses in
the 9th Ward were raised from their foundations and tossed
into each other by the floodwaters. Some areas of the
city were flooded 20 ft deep.
photo by Win Henderson/FEMA |
Most of Boh's staff showed up after the storm at the company's
Baton Rouge office, allowing it to mobilize quickly to repair
the levees. Boh was without computers for about 10 days until
they could be retrieved from the New Orleans office, which
was relatively unharmed, thanks to its location over a first-floor
parking garage. The company hopes to move back into the New
Orleans office in early November.
Boh's asphalt plant and maintenance facility were not so
fortunate. Both were underwater. Its fabrication yard and
many pieces of equipment were damaged.
Despite the difficulties with FEMA, Boh Bros. has been able
to find work in the frenetic post-Katrina environmental arena,
primarily at the state and local level. "We responded
to call-outs and asked questions later," Boh says.
Moving Fast
A major short turn-around project that Boh Bros. obtained
was the repair of the Interstate-10 twin-span bridge over
Lake Pontchartrain. The Louisiana Dept. of Transportation
and Development requested bids to repair the bridge on Sept.
5, nine days after the hurricane hit. Bids were due on Sept.
9.
The contract was signed at 5 p.m., and his firm started working
the next day, Boh says. The company had until Oct. 31 to reopen
the first side, a deadline it beat by 17 days, opening a span
on Oct. 14.
Barriere Construction, New Orleans, hit the ground running
after Hurricane Katrina. "It's amazing how people respond,"
says George Wilson, president of the asphalt and concrete
paving company.
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Crews are
working around the clock to get the area's trains running
again, including repairs to this washed-out railroad bridge.
photo by Marvin Nauman |
Almost immediately, the superintendents, field engineers
and all levels of management started gathering in Baton Rouge.
The next day they took over the offices of the Louisiana Asphalt
and Paving Association as a base of operations. The superintendents
were able to find enough of their crews to do a few small
jobs the first week, and by the second week, the crews were
back, Wilson says.
Thinking Ahead
The company sidestepped the communications nightmare that
hamstrung the region because it made a strategic decision
two years ago to outsource its information system and opted
for a plan that would provide emergency communications in
case of a disaster.
Five days after the storm, Barriere had 20 satellite phones
and computers. The company found as many apartments and rooms
as possible and turned trailers into bunk houses with eight
beds, a shower and kitchen for hourly employees. The third-generation,
family-owned business even paid its employees for the two
weeks of work that was lost to Katrina. "We had the bank
run the checks from the last week," Wilson says.
The return to work was greatly aided by fortune. Neither of
Barriere's asphalt plants were damaged, and one was near a
powerplant and had its electricity back on quickly, he adds.
The company had revenue coming in by the third week after
the storm. By the fourth week, it was running at about 60%
of normal, and at 80% by mid-October. Primarily, it is doing
clean-up work for the state transportation department.
The company also weathered the storm without a work-force
crisis, with nearly 80% of its employees returning. "About
10% of our employees are relocating," Wilson says. "We
thought it would be worse than that."
Many of Barriere's usual customers have canceled their projects
from before the storm and paving work has slowed, but the
company says it has little interest in pursuing federal work.
"We're just trying to get back to what we normally do,"
Wilson says.
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Plumbers
prepare piping and connectors for a sewage treatment system
that will process 47,500 gal. a day to serve a 550-unit
temporary housing site being built by FEMA.
photo by Win Henderson/FEMA |
But the company has found a small silver lining in the storm
and its aftermath. "Now all of us over 30 have learned
how to text message," he says.
Out of Kilter
Pat Gootee is preparing to watch his New Orleans home of
32 years bulldozed to the ground. "It's not easy. We
raised five kids here," he says.
Gootee, who retired Sept. 1 as president of Gootee Construction
of, Metairie, La., and his family has never tried to ride
out a storm, but it never occurred to them that they might
not have a home to return to.
Gone are the lush green surroundings, his wife's patio garden
and the oak tree. "It's stark, it's ugly, it's quiet,"
Gootee says. "There are no birds, no squirrels. Things
you wouldn't think of are lost."
Gootee expects it will take two years to sort things out.
But he's sure of one thing. "We're not leaving,"
he says. The Orleans Parish native says the city did not lose
everything. Its soul is still there and the rest can be rebuilt,
he says.
The company has a solid client base of New Orleans' businesses,
local governments and the archdiocese, and Gootee is letting
them know that Gootee Construction is open for business. Still,
he is not interested in getting involved with federal contracts.
"I don't want to be in that red-tape chain," he
says.
Gootee has no doubt the reconstruction of the city will be
done by locals. "The disaster teams can get work done
while the locals are trying to recover," he says. "But
it's hard to be ready to move when you have to take care of
your own home. Everything is out of kilter right now."
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