Businesses Mount Relief Efforts

TAMPA Friday morning, six Courtyard Marriott hotel employees from Tampa climbed into a co-worker's truck and started driving toward New Orleans, towing a 24-foot trailer loaded with gasoline and hotel supplies.

By the next day, the volunteers had arrived in Louisiana and begun making the rounds of Marriott hotels damaged or closed by Hurricane Katrina. Their mission: clean and re-open rooms needed for relief workers.

The crew is among the first trickle of what's expected to be a wave of workers to be sent by companies based in Florida and elsewhere to the storm ravaged Gulf area to help business operations get up and running again -- a keystone for reviving the region's economy.

"They'll be cleaning out rooms, removing debris, everything just so we can put things back together and get them ready for Red Cross workers," said Terri Smith, an assistant general manager for the Courtyard Marriott hotel in downtown Tampa.

In a week, Smith plans to head to the area with 10 more co-workers. "I expect a lot of hard work, and I'm from Southeast Texas, so this really hit close to home for me."

While the Marriott effort is a sign that some businesses are marshaling resources to get their Gulf operations back on their feet, many Tampa Bay area companies with operations in the disaster area said they are still grappling with getting a handle on just how badly their operations were hit -- and what help employees in the region need immediately.

For the most part, Tampa-based companies interviewed said they are focused right now on contributing to charity relief efforts to help victims of the massive hurricane.

The scope of the storm, and the fact that many residents in the disaster area have been displaced or rendered homeless, presents a daunting challenge for companies trying to find and help employees as well as determining whether to relocate key operations if necessary.

Many companies' plans are preliminary, and executives say they hesitate to think too far ahead about business recovery efforts until they know just what's needed. Still, a grim economic reality is taking hold: Much of the storm-damaged area is a virtual economic black hole, with few companies operating or jobs to keep employees busy and paid.

Even for big national companies, restoring basic operations, such as processing and sending paychecks, will present a massive challenge, said Asoo Vakharia, a business professor with the University of Florida.

"Even if you have a back office somewhere else to take up the slack, where do you mail the checks to?" Vakharia said. "You need to find out where the employees even are."

Other Tampa companies that have begun trying to get their operations and employees in the disaster area back on their feet include Outback Steakhouse Inc., the national restaurant franchiser.

The company, which had about a dozen restaurants either shut down or damaged by the storm, has sent workers to the area to assist employees and help reopen restaurants, said Chief Operating Officer Paul Avery. Outback executives say they will provide jobs for displaced workers at other restaurants and help find housing for displaced workers in other parts of the country.

Local operators of the Marriott ExecuStay, a corporate housing provider, also are trying to help company employees and operations in the disaster area. Tampa employees are pulling housewares from the company inventory, such as kitchenware, bedding and toiletries, and sending them to Mississippi to help resupply corporate apartments now serving as housing for people displaced by the storm, said Juli Corlew, a Marriott ExecuStay franchise owner in Tampa.

The Tampa Tribune and its parent company, Media General Inc., have business relationships with Marriott ExecuStay and Courtyard Marriott for lodging.

Corlew said she also is working to contact Marriott hotel employees in the Gulf who lost their jobs and match them with open positions in Tampa.

"If you have no home to come back to, you can come to Tampa with your family and we'll give you a suite for 90 days and a job," Corlew said. "We can help get the kids settled in a new school, and our employees are adopting families."

Verizon Wireless has sent about 20 employees from the Tampa Bay area, primarily network technicians, along with generators and cellular equipment to storm-damaged states. They will help re-establish communications and survey what repairs are needed.

The company expects to cycle workers between Tampa and the Gulf area until communications become more permanent.

Executives with the Tampa Bay Tech Forum said they are contacting member companies and assembling a list of resources for companies disrupted by the storm, and how they can relocate to Tampa.

"We're trying to help those people and companies who were in ground zero ," said Andy Hafer, executive director of the organization. "If anyone in the Gulf Coast area has been impacted, we want them to know they have a sister organization here."