With power and water restored in some areas, ready mixed and precast producers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have begun a gradual return to pre-Hurricane Katrina business operations. A brief sampling reveals operators in the three states are confronting staffing challenges tied to employee displacement, limited lodging for new or temporary workers, and competition for labor capable of assisting in storm clean up.

In New Orleans, four-plant ready mixed operator Carlo Ditta Inc. is running from two sites where power is available. The company’s hardest hit property was its headquarters in Harvey, west of New Orleans, where three feet of water flooded its offices. Its city plant, near the Mississippi River, is on high ground and was not flooded. Ditta Vice President John Uhl says he has accounted for all employees, although some that evacuated the area are not expected to return.

Gulf Concrete, part of Mississippi market leader MMC Materials, has reopened five of seven plants near the coast. Orders have been split evenly between work scheduled prior to the storm and emergency roadway repairs, including a bridge deck on an Interstate 10 structure damaged by a floating oil rig. A sixth plant, in Bay St. Louis, was lost due to storm surge exceeding 25 feet, but will be rebuilt. The remaining plant, on the Louisiana border, is idle.

One customer for whom Gulf Concrete’s Biloxi plant has resumed deliveries is Tindall Corp., whose 15-acre site on the city’s Back Bay began pouring in mid to late September. Tindall Vice President Jeff Woodruff says the storm surge ruined virtually all powered equipment and more than $1 million in finished product at the site, and deposited perhaps 50 boats and parts of two casino barges on the property. Delivery of mobile office structures, replacement of gantry crane engines, and some equipment rental, along with debris clearing, enabled the production re-start.

As Concrete Currents previously noted, Tindall/Biloxi and its neighbor in nearby Pass Christian, Gulf Coast Pre-Stress, operate amid areas of greatest Katrina destruction. GCP, which has a 90-acre plant on an industrial canal linked to Bay St. Louis, began more than three weeks of wind and storm surge-driven clean up days after the hurricane hit. Truck shipment of undamaged product started mid-month. By the end of September, a barge load was dispatched, but required GCP to hire an outside tugboat operator with a vessel capable of clearing low bridges between the plant and bay.

On Sept. 30, with batch plant and crane motors repaired or replaced, and aggregate stockpiles re-charged, GCP staged its first post-hurricane pour. About 50 production crew have returned to work, representing 20 to 25 percent of staff during peak or normal production. Among priority work GCP expects to resume in the near future will be fabrication of 36-in. piles and 72-in. bulb tee girders for a Florida Interstate 10 twin bridge, replacing a structure damaged by Hurricane Ivan.

In earlier postings at www.precast.org, National Precast Concrete Association members reported limited plant damage and power outage from the storm. Toward the end of September, Custom Precast, Gainey’s Concrete, Hanson Pipe/Hattiesburg, and Universal Precast cited a common theme in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana: Current or prospective employees had been recruited by Federal Emergency Management Agency contractors for clean up and debris removal – at $20 to $35/hour.