Prospect of building boom urging

contractors to get back online

Gallo Mechanical, one of New Orleans’ biggest mechanical contractors, was also one of the city’s busiest on August 26. David Gallo, the company’s president, counted 16 active projects the Friday before the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. He said the company employed some 100 pipe fitters and plumbers from UA Local 60 in New Orleans and a few from neighboring Local 568 in Gulfport, Miss.

The beginning of the next work week, however, everything came to a swift and complete halt in a most unbelievable way. Gallo surely expected some level of damage from the hurricane. But he was totally unprepared for the whopper administered when the levee gave way submerging his home and his business under several feet of water for almost a month.

“Our office space was totally wiped out,” Gallo said. The 24 computer workstations and 3 servers, desks, chairs, files, drawings: all were on the first floor. Outside the office the news was worse. More than a third of Gallo’s 33 vehicles were sunk up to their dashboards and declared a total loss. Washed away also were hand tools and lots of equipment, from welding machines to forklifts, left on job sites around New Orleans. The company’s new satellite office in Gulfport, which sustained significant wind and water damage from Hurricane Katrina, is also shut down.

On Saturday, Sept. 24, Gallo talked to JobScope, recalling the trials of the past four weeks. He is still very much in an emergency response mode, striving to bring his beleaguered business back to normal. Surprisingly, the company is working today, but on a limited scale and from a temporary, somewhat scattered home office. Gallo’s desk today is in office space belonging to B&C Sheet Metal, Inc., in Denham Springs, La., 75 miles away. His friend, Jimmy Clark, freed enough space for a desk for David Gallo and his accounting staff. Clark, the president of B&C, also helped Gallo find an apartment in the area and a rental car — no small task after the storm.

Needless to say, Gallo’s projects in New Orleans went on the hold while the city dries out. Three of their larger projects, a couple hospital jobs and a movie theater, however, were not shut down by the hurricane. So there has been work at least for workers who stayed in the area.

Gallo opened the temporary office on Sept. 1, installed new computers and got right to work putting out the first payroll, on Sept. 9, using checks borrowed also from the sheet metal contractor. “We had no checks. Our bank was swamped just like we were,” Gallo explained.

“We’re very proud of our organization. We actually had the checks to employees a week later than they were supposed to. And since then we have been working regularly, getting paid.”

Except for one brief visit to recover some critical records, with a police escort in tow, Gallo hasn’t returned to his New Orleans office on Agricultural Street, where the area remained under lock down. Until they can get back there and establish some kind of temporary quarters, they have had to scatter much of their office staff to other locations. At the theater job site, in Covington, La., for example, they’ve set up their operations center in a trailer.

Gallo has ordered enough trailers for 2,400 square feet of temporary office space that he plans to use until his permanent office can be restored. He hopes to be set up here in a few weeks, if possible, when he believes work in New Orleans might begin coming back. In the meantime, he has been fortunate and grateful for all the help, big and small, he has gotten from people inside and outside his organization.

“Our biggest obstacles have been lack of tools, lack of vehicles, the transportation around the city and logistics of getting to work, and fuel shortages. Then you go into the personal things. It’s just beyond belief. Just getting to work in the morning became an issue,” Gallo said.

“I’ve got some fantastic people. They’ve been unbelievable, finding a way to do things and put out extra effort everywhere,” he added. One of Gallo’s estimators, a Local 60 member, returned to work in the field using his own tools. “People have opened their houses to others needing shelter,” Gallo noted. Workers have helped transport each other to work.

His professional peers have also come to the rescue. Friends from six mechanical contracting firms around the country, who know David Gallo through volunteer service in the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA), sent trucks, tools and equipment to Gallo Mechanical. Additionally, they all flew to Houston one weekend to sit down with David Gallo and map out an emergency recovery plan for the company. Gallo is grateful for the help from his friends at Advance Mechanical Systems, Inc. in Mt. Prospect, Ill.; Humphrey Company, Inc., Houston, Texas; Hussung Mechanical Contractors, Inc., Louisville, Ky.; NewMech Companies, Inc., St. Paul., Minn.; Postler & Jaeckle Corporation, Rochester, N.Y.; and Smith & Oby Company, Cleveland, Ohio.

Gallo said money donated by MCAA has enabled them to provide emergency money to employees on top of assistance received from FEMA and the American Red Cross. He added that the unions also came up with money to help members relocate and get back on their feet.

How has Gallo Mechanical fared compared to their competitors? “Everybody is in the same boat,” he said. “We’ve lost our offices and our homes — all they can be is as bad as me. I hope they are better off.”

After the floodwater went away

Bright and early Monday morning, Sept. 26, we meet in a parking lot in Mandeville, La., for the trip across Lake Pontchartrain to visit the office of Baudier Mechanical Contractors Inc., in St. Bernard Parish. It is the first day authorities permit residents to return, but only for the day to have a look at their property. They must leave before sundown, as the area still is without electricity and water.

All four of us fit comfortably into the roomy pickup truck belonging to Robert and Cheri Baudier. Like Gallo, the Baudiers lost it all when hurricane Katrina came calling. Their business, located in Chalmette, was underwater for weeks. The first floor of their seaside home in East New Orleans was washed away as was a new house they were building across Lake Pontchartrain. The water also destroyed their Ford Thunderbird and Jeep Cherokee, parked outside their office.

But they are grateful they are alive and safe, and they are determined to survive what’s ahead.

A few soldiers and police officers guard a checkpoint as we enter the Causeway bridge over the lake. The bumper-to-bumper column of cars inches ahead, but as we get over the lake traffic opens up. Miles to our left, the booms of large crains are visible atop the Interstate 10 bridge, replacing sections of road damaged by the surge. It is expected to reopen soon.

The Baudiers are slowly getting back to work. Before the hurricane, they had 20 employees. Almost everyone evacuated the area, and many remain scattered as far away as Denver and Iowa. The remodeling jobs they worked on, in hotels, schools and other institutions in New Orleans, have been put on hold.

“We are trying to get other workers back but it’s hard, Cheri said. “They don’t have any way of coming back, they don’t have any place to live,” Bob added. While FEMA amasses the trailers, real estate and infrastructure for large-scale “temporary communities” are desperately needed to house workers for the rebuilding effort. It’s anybody’s guess when and if that will happen. Henry Heier said large tracts of land were now being bulldozed to prepare these “mega-trailer parks.”

The Baudier’s current living space is in an old bank building that was turned into a nursery. They are joined there by two of their friends, who actually found the space from their boss. Bob, a plumber, constructed a makeshift shower. “Now it is a refugee camp,” he joked.

A moldy mess

My first thought as we arrived at the company office is: “Not too bad.” The walls and roof are still there. The open windows are unbroken. Warned about entering the office with boots on, the only protection I can cobble together to protect my sneakers are two plastic bags held fast around my ankles with duct tape. Not exactly OSHA-compliant, I decide, but they work.

Once inside, the trick to keeping your balance, and your plastic boots, is to walk slowly through the black, greasy sludge, 3-4 inches deep, that has settled on the floor. Signs of mold and mildew are everywhere. The water line on the wall, about six feet high, can be traced by the mold growing beneath it. Even though windows were wide open for days, the smell is overpowering.

Besides a flood, the place looks like an earthquake hit it. Chairs are no longer where they belong but upside down in opposite corners or other rooms. Telephones, computer terminals, wastebaskets are tipped over, damp and mud coated. Drawings, binders and records are spread everywhere. I pause to help Cheri yank open a file drawer at one desk. It takes all four hands and arms.

The damage and confusion are equally apparent in the shop area where cans, bottles, boxes and other small items settled wherever the receding water dropped them. In a parts storage area, boxes used to organize fittings have floated off their shelves spilling their contents on the muddy floor. The sludge near the open garage door and in the yard is dried and cracked, almost hard enough to walk on. The company trucks, bobcat and forklift parked outside are total losses, I am told.

Afterwards I wonder out loud how best to handle the clean up inside: what has to happen first, how long it will take to scoop all the sludge off the floor. Bob doesn’t seem to even want to venture a guess. He can’t bring himself to think of it yet, perhaps still consumed with other tasks that must come first or how he is going to find the help that will be necessary to pull it all off.

Like many contractors here, the Baudiers need help quickly to get back on their feet. Up to now, the federal government, through FEMA, seems to have concentrated its resources on helping the poorest. However, the lack of any attention toward the business community, I sense, is becoming a source of frustration. The Baudiers have contacted their insurance company to review their coverage, but their claim and check will take time. Cheri applied for a Small Business Administration loan one week after the disaster, but hasn’t yet received a reply.

“Our main concern is getting the company back up and running,” Cheri said. “We need someplace to work out of.”

Since the storm the hours of each day are consumed dealing with a multitude of issues that need decisions right away. “We’ve gone from one idea to the next idea,” Bob said. “You couldn’t sleep at night, constantly thinking about things and wondering, do we go this way or that way?

“And we have people who depend on us,” Cheri said. “I want our guys to come back. We had some good people.” They continue to keep in touch with workers who have relocated.

“It’s a slow procedure because there are a lot of things you need to get back in business. You need vehicles, you need clerks, you need manpower, you need food. You need everything when you start from scratch,” Bob explained.