Pulling Together – Recovery from the Storm (Does not include graphics included in original piece) Nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast, Xerox employees and customers are still picking up the pieces. In August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the United States’ Gulf Coast. It was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the U.S. Approximately 200 Xerox employees were affected by the hurricane’s destruction and six Xerox sites throughout Louisiana and Mississippi were flooded or unreachable. The city of New Orleans was devastated. In addition to the storm surge, the broken levees caused widespread flooding and continued the destruction long after the storm passed. Now, a year later, New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast is trying to rebuild, Xerox offices are again open for business, and employees have either relocated or come back to their original jobs. Manager of Professional Services Alex LePine describes current conditions. “The hurricane was innocuous in comparison to the flooding afterwards. New Orleans is still a ghost town, with tens of thousands of flooded cars still parked all over the place. Traffic is a nightmare, and the city is full of insurance adjusters and contractors. Homes are not reoccupied and shelf life for building supplies is almost zero at Home Depot. It was just stuff, but at the end of the day, you still have a sentimental tie to what was once home.” Cindy Pullen, Vice President of Mid South Central Xerox Services Operations in Baton Rouge, La., notes that there are still areas in New Orleans that are without power. Xerox has set up two trailers in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, using them as rooms for visiting employees to sleep in. The hotels in both cities are still full of people displaced from their homes. “Our main office opened up in October, six weeks after the storm, but prior to that, people would work anywhere they could find a phone line or computer access,” says Pullen. Back to Work There are many individual stories of loss and recovery, but the themes are the same. The assistance they have received from family, friends and Xerox has made all the difference in their combined experiences. According to Ken Walk, Manager of Service Operations, whose own house ended up in two feet of water, some employees have permanently relocated and are working for Xerox at different operations, but they are in the minority. Many have come back to their original sites and are rebuilding their homes and neighborhoods. Jamie Derbigny, an account associate, left New Orleans with his entire family. They ended up in a Lake Charles, La., hotel for a day but management asked them to leave because all the rooms had been booked for a football game. The Derbignys then found shelter through a local church, but had to evacuate a second time due to Hurricane Rita. They ended up returning to New Orleans and are staying in their damaged home with 10 more relatives, who have all helped to gut Jamie’s home. “It has been an ongoing challenge to keep our employees productive and employed, while also supporting their need to get their personal lives restructured after the damage of Hurricane Katrina,” says Walk. "Xerox found temporary jobs for employees who were displaced. Some people worked for the Red Cross as a stopgap in the weeks right after Katrina, and some went to other areas within Mid South Central that were shorthanded. Most of them have since returned to New Orleans.” Back to Business For many companies affected by the storm, this has been a belated wake-up call to look into document management and imaging. Entergy, an energy company based in the gulf area, is looking at an imaging contract with Xerox due to the destruction of their records during the storm. “When those levies broke, all the files in many businesses were destroyed,” says Pullen. “The damage that Katrina caused really proves and supports what we tell customers about disasters and making documents and information safe." LePine is working very closely with the city of New Orleans to assist them in the production and management of building permits. Virtually all city operations stopped after Katrina and they laid off more than 3,000 people. The city is just now trying to restart vital services as well as ones that bring in revenue. “The city contracted to expand the amount of services Xerox provides,” says LePine. “Everything from designing forms for licenses to providing software that will allow the city to extract data and place images on forms. We have gone from just printing services, to an end-to-end delivery package.” I have seen a commitment to get things back to where they should be,” LePine observes. “Attitudes are good despite the catastrophe.” Walk agrees. “During this difficult time, our employees and customers came through with shining colors in terms of support. A year later, our employees continue the hard work of recovering from this devastating storm.”