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Debris, roofing called key issues after storms

Posted on: Thursday, 6 October 2005, 14:38 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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