The fact that hurricane Katrina has been the most destructive natural disaster that has ever befallen the United States simply doesn't say enough as to the problems the people and the economy of the affected region are facing. Here in Pensacola, you can hear radio ads placed by companies who are trying to locate their employees. What do you do when your 6, or 100, or 5000 employees are missing?
As an employer, the uncertainty of not knowing where your people are and whether they are dead or alive has got to be a sickening feeling. Likewise for employees who don't know if their job or their employer still exists. The problem is the same for all businesses, small or large. Employers simply don't know what happened to their employees and are buying advertising time and space to advertise toll-free numbers for their employees to call to try to account for them and help them. Even if the power and other utilities are restored, these businesses can't operate without getting their people back, which is not a certainty.
After Ivan and Dennis, people for the most part could take it and make repairs. People still had, for the most part, their homes to live in. After Katrina, there are no homes to go back to, and people have scattered throughout the country.
Not all people who fled the area will be coming back. The seismic shift in humanity from the gulf coast to higher ground is something that has never happened before but has repercussions not only in the areas directly affected by the storm, but also by the cities around the country who took them in. How does a business decide whether to start over from square one, or resume operations, or just fold and try something else, when the prospective labor force is unknown?
