Debris, roofing called key issues after storms

By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Removal of up to 70 million cubic
yards of debris and fixing the roofs of 110,000 damaged houses
on the U.S. Gulf Coast are two of the biggest tasks still
looming in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the head of
the Army Corps of Engineers said on Thursday.

“Right now, we’re looking at, we estimate, about 70,000
roofs in Louisiana, about 35,000 in Mississippi and about 5,000
in Texas,” Lt. Gen. Carl Strock told a Pentagon briefing.

“A big mission to go in and allow people to reoccupy their
homes until they can put permanent repairs in place. This is
critical for solving some of the housing shortages — put
people back where they live,” he added.

Strock said debris removal by government contractors was
also a critical issue and that the Corps of Engineers —
operating under the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or
FEMA — had already issued contracts for up to $2 billion in
cleanup.

Only 8 million cubic yards has been removed so far, he
added, calling it major progress from a historical standpoint
after last month’s devastating blows by Katrina.

The general said that in 1992, it took nine months to clean
up 18 million cubic yards of debris after Hurricane Andrew
swept across south Florida. Andrew also hit Louisiana.

The Corps of Engineers is also expected to conduct a
feasibility study at an expected cost of about $12 million,
shared equally by federal and local governments, on whether to
increase the capacity of New Orleans’ battered levees to
withstand powerful Category 4 or 5 hurricanes in the future.

Those levees, built to withstand Category 3 storms, were
overwhelmed by Katrina when it swept ashore as a Category 4
hurricane.

Strock said such a study normally would take between 24 and
30 months, but it was likely to be done faster because of the
increasingly powerful hurricanes in recent years.

If such a study showed that improving the levees was
feasible from a financial and environmental standpoint, the
cost of the project could range from $2.5 billion to $3.5
billion and take years, Strock added.