This article was originally published in Business Traveler magazine, October 2005.
New Orleans struggles to rebuild its tourism-based economy after one of the worst natural disasters in American history.
By Sara Shipley Hiles
The patients kept coming, hot, tired, and some clad in the same stinky clothes they had worn through waist-high flood water. Some people had cuts on their hands and feet from debris or flying glass. Others had run out of medication to treat their diabetes or high blood pressure.
A first aid station in the Superdome had been converted into a makeshift emergency room for the 25,000 people who took refuge there from Hurricane Katrina. Supplies stocked to treat minor ailments during football games quickly disappeared.
Bill Brown, a nurse and emergency medical technician, tried to comfort patients as best he could. With only a generator to provide light, and no running water or basic medicines, all Brown could offer were compassionate words.
“I would tell people, ‘I know you have diabetes, and I know you need insulin, but we don’t have any right now. You can manage this. I don’t want you to think about it. You’re alive, and we’re going to be okay. They’re coming to rescue us. And God bless you.’ ”
When Brown arrived in New Orleans Aug. 21 on a Delta commercial flight, he expected to spend a week enjoying Cajun cuisine and attending a professional conference. As executive director of the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians, a certifying agency based in Columbus, Ohio, Brown travels to about 50 meetings around the country each year.
But when he left the devastated city on a medical evacuation helicopter Aug. 31, two days after deadly Katrina struck, Brown had a feeling that neither he nor New Orleans would ever be the same.
“It was the most miserable, stressful, difficult situation I’ve ever been in, in my life,” he said. And Brown knows stressful situations. During the Vietnam War, he rescued pilots behind enemy lines as a member of the U.S. Air Force Pararescue team, and later he confronted life-or-death situations as an emergency nurse and paramedic, he said.
New Orleans may have had its own near-death experience in Katrina. The storm left up to 80 percent of the city mired in filthy floodwater for weeks. Commerce halted during a mandatory evacuation, and authorities warned the few who stayed behind about the spread of disease from bloated corpses drifting unattended through abandoned streets.
Reports of widespread looting left the impression that the city had descended into uncontrollable chaos. House Speaker Dennis Hastert even floated the idea of not rebuilding the below-sea level city, which will always be vulnerable to hurricanes and floods.
Although it may have seemed briefly that “The City That Care Forgot” might be forgotten for good, New Orleans’ vital role in shipping and tourism makes that unlikely. New Orleans already is beginning to recover, a process expected to take years.
$100 Billion of Damage
Hurricane Katrina’s assault on the Gulf Coast and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans caused more than $100 billion in economic damage, according to an estimate by the firm Risk Management Solutions of Newark, Calif. New Orleans accounted for more than half of the estimated damages.
“As a factual matter, in a span of 24 hours, we lost a third of our economy,” said Dan Juneau, president of the Louisiana Association for Business and Industry, a statewide chamber of commerce based in Baton Rouge. State officials estimated that the storm disrupted 70,000 firms in the New Orleans region.
Hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents and businesses fled to Baton Rouge, Houston, Dallas, Memphis, and points beyond.
“It’s realistic to think that some of them won’t come back,” said James Richardson, an economist at Louisiana State University.
“There’s no doubt that there are some businesses that will decide it’s better to be elsewhere,” said Richardson, who co-authors an annual report on Louisiana’s economic outlook. “I think every business now will be more cautious. It’s only natural.”
Richardson predicted that the “new” New Orleans will be smaller and leaner. But he believes that all of the city’s top industries—oil and gas production, maritime shipping, higher education, and tourism—will return.
Within weeks of the storm, there were signs of improvement. The Port of New Orleans, which ships Midwestern farm crops around the world and handles tons of imported steel, rubber, and coffee, reopened to commercial traffic in mid-September.
Gasoline prices started to fall as major refineries in the Gulf went back online. The Louis Armstrong International Airport reopened to commercial traffic. At press time, the airport had limited service from five airlines.
For some sectors, normal business operations are months away. Major universities in New Orleans, including Tulane, canceled classes for the semester, farming students out across the country.
The homeless New Orleans Saints had to move out of the damaged Superdome for the rest of the NFL season. The team is now based in San Antonio, with several games scheduled in Baton Rouge.
At battered hotels in the heart of the city, workers ripped out waterlogged carpeting and drywall. New Orleans proper remained largely empty for weeks, save for emergency workers and a few thousand hardy residents who’d ridden out the storm. More flooding came courtesy of Hurricane Rita, which struck the Texas-Louisiana border Sept. 24.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin began letting New Orleans residents back into the city,
neighborhood by neighborhood. A handful of hotels reopened with limited services, and others promised to open their doors by Nov. 1.
The Last Resort
The city’s tourism and convention business, the jewel of its economy, may take the longest to recover.
All city-wide conventions have been canceled through March 31, 2006, according to the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, which served as a shelter of last resort for thousands of evacuees, suffered extensive damage to its roof, meeting halls, and interior during and after the storm.
Staff members working out of temporary offices in Baton Rouge scrambled to help reschedule conventions for about 400 groups who were set to meet in New Orleans.
New Orleans is expected to lose an estimated $3.5 billion in visitor, meeting and convention income due to the storm, said Jeff Anding, director of convention marketing.
At least one group—the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America—moved its convention to Houston in February 2006, said Jordy Tollett, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau. The meeting is expected to bring 20,000 people to Houston, with an estimated economic benefit of $19.6 million.
Other groups are heading to Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando, and Washington, D.C.
Overland Park, Kan.–based Brooke Corp. announced it would cancel its 2005 convention, which was set for New Orleans on Oct. 16–19, out of deference to franchisees and others affected by the storm. The company specializes in financial services and insurance.
Brooke executives also said in a press release that the company planned to return for its 2006 convention “to demonstrate our confidence that the great city of New Orleans will soon rebuild.”
Anding said the visitor’s bureau has received an outpouring of support from similar groups offering to book future conventions in New Orleans. “People have said, ‘You tell us when you’re ready, and we’ll book all our meetings with you,’ ” he said. “It warms my heart.”
Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans visitor’s bureau, posted a statement on the organization’s Web site emphasizing that the city’s historic core remains largely intact. The French Quarter stayed mostly dry during the flood, and many buildings in the Central Business District had power restored quickly.
“America’s most romantic, walkable historic city is not itself; how long it will be before we are back on our feet and welcoming you again to New Orleans, we do not know,” he wrote. “We hope it will only be a matter of months. The birthplace of jazz, home of magnificent European architecture, and originator of the most renowned cuisine on the planet has suffered a terrible blow. But the city’s spirit is strong, its people are resilient, and its incredible history and character survive.”
Business Travel Will Rebound
Juneau, the leader of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, said the storm provided a unique opportunity to redesign New Orleans for the better. In rebuilding, the city can diversify its economic base beyond tourism, he said.
“I think there’s an opportunity here for some creative planning,” he said. “In a sense, you have a blank slate to write on.”
The city’s image will need polishing, too, because of “some of the negative images that came out of the news stories,” Juneau said.
Long known for its high crime rate and low school rankings, New Orleans’ seedy side looked even worse at the height of the storm. The slow, ineffective emergency response hit a sour note for others.
Dr. Judy Embry, a psychologist at Argosy University in Dallas who was stranded at a hotel in New Orleans during the storm, said she talked to a group of Dutch visitors whose government had tried unsuccessfully to evacuate them. “They were appalled by the whole situation, and said they’d never come back,” she said.
But Embry said the experience would only make her more likely to return to New Orleans, and she praised the staff at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel for evacuating more than 800 people safely. “As soon as [New Orleans residents] get going, we all need to go back and visit. That is what will get them up back on their feet,” she said.
Brown, the nurse/EMT who volunteered at the Superdome after the storm, said he would “absolutely” go back. He said residents of the city exhibited great courage during their ordeal. “I think New Orleans will be a safer, more prosperous city in the future than it was before the storm,” he said. “It’s a gigantic urban renewal project.”
Lana Sonnier, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Economic Development Department, said officials are taking into account that the city needs to repair more than just its physical infrastructure, such as levees and pump stations. The state is welcoming entrepreneurs and trying to attract new businesses and industries, as well as planning to improve urban services.
“We’re working not so much to rebuild as to recreate the city,” she said. “This tragedy that’s befallen us unfortunately brought to light a lot of things that weren’t on the priority list previously, due to a lack of resources. We’re not going to take for granted the lessons we’ve learned.”
Caleb Tiller, a spokesman for the National Business Travel Association, said he did not expect the disaster to have a long-term effect on business travel to the city. For example, after the terrorist bombings in London this year, the organization polled its members and found no evidence that travelers would shy away.
“In recent years, business travelers have learned to be resilient. They’ve learned these unfortunate events happen, but they’ve learned that continuing with business is an important thing to do,” he said.
Brown said the chance of another hurricane would not stop him from doing business in the city. “I’m not going to decide not to do a business trip to L.A. because of a (potential) earthquake, and I’m not going to decide not to go to the East Coast because of a (potential) hurricane,” he said.