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Gulf Region Infrastructure Slowly Revives
The Mississippi River is the cheapest route for shipping many crops and other commodities destined for overseas markets. The United States exports a quarter of its grain; of that, more than half departs from ports hit by Katrina.
(By Jim Mone -- Associated Press)
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Businesses such as Oreck, Weber Marine, and Pilot have kept operations going by bypassing the region's conventional transportation and communications networks. Government officials say that efforts to repair those networks, which might allow companies to get back to working at full speed, are proceeding with mixed progress.
Commercial airline service could begin as early as today at Gulfport-Biloxi and will likely resume next week at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, Department of Transportation officials said yesterday. The New Orleans airport has been closed to commercial air traffic since it lost power during the hurricane and has been operating as a makeshift hospital.
In Louisiana, several highways remain closed to the public. State officials said it could be a long time before a major bridge that crosses Lake Ponchartrain is restored, providing access to northwest New Orleans. State officials are inspecting 90 moveable bridges in the area to prioritize repairs. Many other sections of the highways that feed into New Orleans remain closed, and it could be weeks or months before they are reopened.
Railroad company CSX Corp. said its 100-mile stretch of track from Pascagoula, Miss., to New Orleans has been closed, with 30 miles severely damaged. The company declined to estimate how long it would take to restore the tracks and is routing traffic around the area. One of its tracks crosses a 9,000-foot bridge in Mississippi that was left to its pilings as the hurricane swept away most of the bridge itself. "We're looking at it as a long-term recovery," said CSX spokesman Gary Sease.
Louisiana officials yesterday began dealing with cell phone systems in Baton Rouge that are overloaded with traffic from evacuees who have reached the state's capital. "It's choked," Louisiana Public Service Commissioner James M. "Jimmy" Field said of the cellular network. "We are trying to work out something to make sure emergency calls can get through."
Just 8 percent of the 215,000 customers in New Orleans had power yesterday, according to state and power company reports.
Oil and natural gas production is slowly returning. While oil production was down 90 percent on Sept. 1, it was down only 57 percent lower than normal yesterday. And natural gas was off 40 percent, compared with 79 percent on Sept. 1.
Even for the companies that successfully navigated all the downed infrastructure, the use of generators, satellite phones and rerouted shipments may exact new costs. "Businesses are going to be able to get around all these disruptions, but it won't be cheap," said Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland business school.
Washington Post staff writers Peter Behr, Justin Blum and Arshad Mohammed contributed to this report.
