Portraits of Destruction and Rebuilding
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Jonathan Ferrara dodged a bullet during Katrina--his art gallery suffered significant damage, but his next-door neighbor's building was completely destroyed. "I had to repair the common wall and my roof had to be replaced, but I was very lucky," Ferrara says.
With no permanent space after Katrina damaged his gallery, Ferrara took his artists' work on a nationwide tour -- from New York to Miami. The traveling exhibition, sponsored in part by The Idea Village, a local non-profit entrepreneurship group, was called "New Orleans Artists in Exile."
In April, the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery reopened at a smaller second-floor location. The gallery sold 25 of 30 paintings during its first show. "I suppose if you're going through this huge tragedy," Ferrara says of the post-Katrina demand for artwork, "in a certain sense, you might want to be surrounded by something that's nice."
Katrina almost wiped out Riverside Lumber. Inventory, equipment, and the facilities were ruined. "We tried to salvage what we could -- which wasn't much," says owner Rusty Hayden.
Following the storm that destroyed his mill, storage facility and office, Hayden began running his family's lumberyard from a small trailer next door, while renting a storage facility.
Kept afloat by his family's personal lines of credit, Hayden was back in business by October. As New Orleans residents continue to rebuild homes and businesses, Hayden tore down all the old lumber sheds and has started rebuilding a new mill three feet above where it used to sit.
Located along the city's now-infamous industrial canal, the shop floor and warehouse of this furniture manufacturer were submerged under 12 feet of water. The company lost all equipment and inventory.
With all of its products ruined, and all 25 employees scattered, the company went into "battle mode," says vice president Rick Davis, managing to fulfill its orders from remote facilities and offices in Minneapolis and Bentonville, Ark.
After months of cleanup, the New Orleans plant is still a long way from reopening. The electricity wasn't turned back on until early August, and there's still no running water. "It's taken months and months and months of work," Davis says. "But we're doing what we have to do."
David Gross's commercial laundry business was badly damaged by Katrina -- cracked walls, flooding, a third of the roof gone. And many of the nearby hotels and resorts that were once his key clients were in similar shape. "In a few short hours our lives were changed forever," Gross says.
"The good news is no one in our circle of friends, family, employees or vendors lost their lives," Gross says. "Material things can be replaced." As for his business, going forward, Gross is placing newfound emphasis on preparation and contingency plans.
One year later, Gulf Coast Laundry Services has been repaired, and its biggest customer, the Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino, is also back on its feet. "The learning experience," Gross says, "has been both profound and ongoing."
Like so many businesses, Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic was flooded during Katrina. "I immediately got a team together and started gutting the building, to save the structure, and salvaging what we could," says Dr. Regina Benjamin, who owns and operates the clinic. "The next day I started seeing patients at a nearby shelter."
After Katrina, volunteers rebuilt the flooded clinic, which was scheduled to reopen after New Year's. In a tragic twist of fate, the clinic caught fire and burned to the ground on New Year's Eve.
Despite hurricane damage to her clinic followed by a devastating fire, Benjamin has never stopped seeing patients. She says she will continue to treat patients in a trailer until the clinic moves in to a permanent building purchased with the help of donations.
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