The area’s massive industrial infrastructure has weathered the historic floods relatively unscathed. But so many of the employees who work at the petrochemical plants and industrial services companies have been personally affected by the catastrophe, it’s impossible to say how long it will be before there is any semblance of business as usual.
“We’re still trying to assess all this right now,” says Turner Industries CEO Roland Toups, who adds a majority of the company’s 9,000 Capital Region employees live in badly flooded areas in Ascension and Livingston parishes. “We have a lot of people hurting right now. It’s a big juggling act and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
At H&E Equipment Services, CEO John Engquist is still trying to assess how many of the company’s roughly 300 local employees lost homes in the flood. He doesn’t have a head count yet, but he is concerned. Like Turner’s employees, a majority of H&E’s workers live in the areas that were hardest hit and most don’t have flood insurance.
“It’s just awful,” says Engquist, who has set up an employee assistance fund. “Our number one concern right now is figuring out how many people are affected and how we can help them.”
Engquist says his company’s headquarters on Pecue Lane and most of its inventory was remarkably spared from flood damage. Though the company no doubt lost some equipment that is currently leased out, he expects the losses to be minimal.
Also unscathed was Epic Piping’s new 268,000-square-foot fabrication facility in Livingston. Though as much as 70% of properties in the parish sustained flood damage, the state-of-the art facility, which opened last month, fared well and reopened for business today.
Many of Epic’s 189 employees, however, were impacted by the flood. Epic President and Chief Operating Officer Remi Bonnecaze says as many as 70% of the company’s employees have been affected, and the company is setting up employee assistance programs.
“But our goal is to get everyone back to work as quickly as possible so we can keep them on their feet,” he says.
Along the Mississippi River, the area’s major chemical plants and refineries fared well, according to Ed Flynn, vice president for safety and security at the Louisiana Chemical Association. All of the major plants have battle-tested contingency plans for weather emergencies, and Flynn says those plans and precautions kept the plants safe.
As with other industrial companies, however, thousands of plant workers have been impacted.
“In talking to the plants this morning we heard, again and again, numbers like 100 employees at this plant and 100 employees at that plant had significant flooding in their homes,” Flynn says. “So from a management perspective we are going to do everything we can to provide assistance to employees and help them through a long difficult road ahead and that is going to go on for many, many months.”
—Stephanie Riegel
