Coastal Services Center

Katrina's waves and winds destroyed and damaged many coastal resource management offices in Mississippi , Louisiana , and Alabama , and changed the focus of numerous coastal management jobs—some believe forever.

"It's changed my job for the rest of my career," says Mike Liffmann, associate executive of the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program and project leader of the Louisiana Sea Grant Extension Project. "It's hard to see nonpoint source pollution in marinas as a priority when the marinas no longer exist."

It's also challenging to do work of any sort when your office, computers, and files have been obliterated. Coastal managers in the impacted areas, however, continued to meet deadlines, issue permits, and provide leadership and support to communities reeling from Katrina's destructive blow.

"Katrina was totally catastrophic to our offices," says Tina Shumate, director of the Comprehensive Resource Management Bureau of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, who is still mostly working out of her car. "We lost everything."

Other hurricanes in the past two years, including Ivan, Dennis, Rita, and Wilma, damaged coastal management facilities across the Gulf Coast , dislocating staff members and creating headaches for managers battling resulting red tape, as well as providing some opportunities.

Like a Bomb

On August 27, two days before Katrina hit, Mississippi Department of Marine Resources staff members gassed up the Biloxi headquarters' fleet of vehicles and moved it to high ground. Computers and files were elevated, moved to the middle of the building, and wrapped in plastic. Some staff members worried that they didn't use enough plastic, or that perhaps it wasn't bound tightly enough, recalls Shumate.

A few days after the storm, David Ruple, manager of the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, navigated damaged and dangerous roads with a limited gasoline supply to get to the agency headquarters of all the state's coastal programs.

What Ruple found was "the whole bottom floor blown out. It looked like a bomb had gone off."

"Nobody saved anything," says Shumate, including the agency's fleet of state vehicles. "We didn't even have paper and pencils."

Grand Bay Reserve facilities in Moss Point fared little better. Even though the reserve office is elevated six feet, three feet of water from the storm surge ruined most of the equipment in offices, as well as an outside storage area containing sampling equipment, four-wheelers, and other gear. The reserve's boats were piled against a fence.

Physical Impacts

Louisiana Coastal Management Division field offices along the state's coastline were damaged, and the New Orleans field office is still closed, says Jim Rives, acting administrator
for the division.

Louisiana Sea Grant field offices also were damaged or destroyed, and the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium lost three buildings, a hatchery, and the air conditioning in its remaining office building on Dauphin Island .

This was a significant issue for staff members trying to work in the building after the storm because the "weather after Katrina was hotter than Hades," says LaDon Swann, consortium director.

The Hits Keep Coming

Katrina exacerbated damage at the Weeks Bay Reserve in Alabama caused by Hurricane Ivan the summer before. Damage wrought by Ivan, says L.G. Adams, reserve manager, included a tree crashing through the roof of the reserve's laboratory, causing $20,000 worth of damage, and the destruction of a 120-foot fishing pier. The reserve had completed $30,000 of the $40,000 worth of repairs needed on the pier when "along came Katrina."

In addition to destroying the repaired pier, Katrina damaged four reserve structures. Adams notes that Katrina had a higher storm surge than had ever before been recorded at the reserve, which was more than 90 miles east of the storm's eye. The surge missed damaging the reserve's interpretive center—which has a 10-foot elevation—by only 10 inches.

A month after Katrina, Hurricane Rita devastated the western half of the Louisiana coastline all the way into Texas . Eddie R. Fisher, director of the Coastal Stewardship Division of the Coastal Resources Program Area in the Texas General Land Office, says the division's La Porte field office was evacuated along with all of metropolitan Houston and that the state's oil spill office near Beaumont was "completely out of service for months."

In October, Hurricane Wilma flooded the offices of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary for the first time, says Billy Causey, sanctuary manager.

"We weren't able to get back into some of the offices due to safety issues," says Causey. "We eventually had to move out of our Lower Region office, and the Lower Keys team remains spread out, working from several makeshift facilities."

Staff members in the Eastpoint offices of Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve in Florida had to abandon their building for an expected six months so that the mold caused by the storm surge from July's Hurricane Dennis could be addressed. Everything from drywall, ductwork, and insulation to carpet and furniture is being replaced, says Seth Blitch, reserve manager. Files, a vehicle, and other equipment also were lost.

Back in Business

Within a week of Katrina's landfall, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources was gearing back up.

The first order of business was to replace the agency's vehicles, says Jan Boyd, director of Coastal Ecology. "The director over our business office didn't have any damage, so she set up her office in her house and did all the paperwork for the vehicles." The agency had $400,000 worth of new vehicles within a week.

"Once we had a car, we had our office," says Shumate. "We started with a cell phone and a van."

Three weeks after the storm, office trailers were set up in the agency's parking lot. About a week later, computers arrived. "The time-consuming thing," Boyd notes, "was getting the power turned on."

Once set up, 20 coastal program staff members began working "in one big room of a double-wide trailer," Boyd says. "Anytime I want to have a quiet conversation, I get in my truck and go somewhere."

Unsafe for Occupation

Meanwhile, Grand Bay Reserve staff members began clearing out their office building and storage shed and salvaging anything they could. All the reserve vehicles and boats were saved except for one boat motor. Once it was cleaned up, the office building was determined to be unsafe for occupation. "You can imagine that by this time there was a great demand," Ruple says. "Everybody needed temporary office space."

A double-wide office trailer was delivered to the reserve in November, and it was another two months before it was set up with power, telephones, water, data lines, and furnishings. During that time, staff members worked out of their or Ruple's home, or shared offices in other state
facilities. "We made do the best we could," he says.

Change in Focus

While many are adapting to less than ideal work environments, many coastal management staff members also are having to adapt to changing job duties and priorities, as well as workloads.

"We're still in response mode," says Louisiana Sea Grant's Liffmann. "It's a completely different mind-set."

Liffmann and his Sea Grant colleagues are now focused on helping get damaged or abandoned boats out of the water, finding housing and office space for staff members and partners, and "being bombarded with requests for information and generous offers of help."

"It's 24/7," he says. "We see our role as serving the community and working to help solve needs. This is the immediate need. We're still very much in the early recovery."

Helping Others

Mississippi 's Shumate also sees the post-storm role of the Comprehensive Resource Management Bureau as "helping with anything people need."

The Saturday after the storm, Shumate and the bureau's staff members began contacting their community partners and asking how they could help. They worked to provide storm-ravaged communities with everything from food and water to grants from the U.S. Department
of Labor.

"We were even passing out our own food supplies to workers clearing the road so they could keep going," recalls Marcia Garcia, staff officer for the bureau. "The damage was so bad, the crew had been out there seven days and had only gone 21 miles."

Both the bureau's and Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant's staff members participated on the Mississippi Governor's Commission for Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal, an exhaustive four-month process to develop a comprehensive recovery plan for the state.

Louisiana Coastal Management Division staff members have been working with the Louisiana Recovery Authority to restore the state's economy and to develop better defenses against disasters.

Deadline Pressure

Even with the storm damage they received, Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium staff members "needed to get back to work right away," LaDon Swann says. "We had the deadline for our two-year omnibus proposals to meet."

Consortium staff members also worked with agency-funded scientists who lost significant amounts of research data, providing funding and other support. Education staff members worked to create outreach materials for the many Vietnamese-speaking fishermen in the area whose livelihoods were destroyed in the storm.

Red Tape

L.G. Adams at the Weeks Bay Reserve says he's still dealing with state and federal paperwork for replacing equipment and completing repairs from damages caused by both Ivan and Katrina.

"It's been a mess," Adams says. "My workload due to Ivan probably increased 20 to 40 percent. Things were just starting to get manageable when along comes Katrina. That's not even counting Dennis, Cindy, and Tropical Storm Arlene."

He notes that in the month of April 2005, three 100-year floods also impacted the area around the reserve.

Even a category one hurricane coming through the area, he says, impacts their jobs—from the extensive preparations staff members have to take to massive cleanup efforts afterwards. "We have bottom hardwood forest, and every square foot of parking area, sidewalks, boardwalks, and trails have debris on them."

Adams adds, "Coastal hazards are a big topic for us now."

Environmental Cleanup

J. Scott Brown, chief of the Mobile Branch of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, also has seen an increase in activity as a result of Ivan and Katrina.

"I had different staffers doing different things in the aftermath of the storms, doing everything from making environmental assessments to actually helping with cleanup," Brown says. "For example, immediately after the storm we looked at emergency repairs of docks and piers, emergency dredging for navigation, and solid waste disposal and recovery. . . It's been an extra burden to our limited staff."

Seizing Opportunity

In addition to increased permitting activities after Hurricane Rita, Texas ' Eddie R. Fisher, also is seizing an opportunity. His agency is applying for $3 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hazard mitigation grant moneys to fund dune restoration.

"This is one of the funding programs that become available after a disaster," Fisher says. From the time Rita hit to the deadline on January 27, Fisher and his staff were gathering the extensive data FEMA required on existing dune projects that needed repair.

While beach nourishment is not considered a mitigation activity that meets grant requirements, Fisher says it can be funded if it's part of an existing public project. They requested additional moneys for such projects.

To take advantage of these types of opportunities, Fisher believes it's crucial for coastal resource managers to partner with state emergency managers before a storm hits.

"You have to have an awareness of how the system works and get your priorities on the same level as everybody else's," he says. "You aren't going to qualify for funding if you don't already have things in place before a disaster. It's a huge process."

Road to Recovery

As recovery progresses, Louisiana 's Liffmann sees his program as never being the same.

All the traditional programs undertaken by the state's Sea Grant Extension, such as nonpoint source pollution, fisheries, seafood, and smart growth "are gone—disappeared," he says. "We're going to have to get back to basics and help people answer the question of ‘does the community come back?' and trying to refocus attention on what it should look like at the end of the day."

He adds, "The whole experience has been tremendously interesting. Even if we wanted to move on and do something else, we can't until we are past dealing with hurricane recovery issues."