Lessons learned

Retailers, suppliers continue recovery from devastation wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita

By USHA V.NATHAN

The wind from Hurricane Rita collapsed this gasoline-station canopy onto the pumps in Port Arthur, Texas, last September. Bob McMillan/FEMA photo

While the impact of last year’s devastating storms, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, recedes in memory, Gulf Coast operators note that the events continue to provide daily lessons on how to cope with the seasonal fury that ravages their coastline each year.

Because they always have had procedures in place to move product safely and to protect key assets when a natural disaster hits, jobbers in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi say that Category 5 hurricanes like Katrina and Rita taught them that there’s always room for fine-tuning emergency plans. Chief among their objectives is to elevate standards to safeguard treasured resources, namely employees, and to meet their commitment to serve customers even when confronting mayhem, as was the case once Katrina and Rita subsided.

It taught them, they say, to prepare as if every hurricane that hits their coastal communities will be of the magnitude of last year’s epic storm. Echoing the view voiced by his colleagues in the region, Bill Sumrall, president of Bay Springs, Miss.-based Sumrall Oil Services, said that his firm was unprepared for meeting Hurricane Katrina, one of the fiercest hurricanes to have ever touched land in the United States.

Sumrall was one of hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents who could not turn on a radio, television or light switch for two weeks late last August through early September. Along with power lines, cell phone towers also had toppled, leaving wide swaths of the southern United States cut off from the rest of the country.

The isolation was akin to being stranded on a deserted island. “A lot of people here sat and stared at their family,” Sumrall recalled. “When the sun went down, that was the end of our day.”

Now a year later, business is back to normal and growing for the fuel distributor, who uses common carriers to transport product to 65 locations, including nine that are company-owned. This summer, Sumrall will attend a hurricane preparedness seminar organized by oil majors for its dealers and he will implement his own plans to cope with a fierce storm — lessons he learned the hard way.

Among his first efforts is to install generators and a satellite telephone system for use by his dispatchers and at his key stations, namely locations along interstates and emergency routes. Last year, none of his store managers were able to reach employees or their families as the hurricane battered the area, raising tremendously the anxiety of both workers and their loved ones, both fearful of one another’s safety.

Sumrall also learned the value of cooperating with civil defense officials at a time when even the lowliest patrol officer could confiscate a company tanker or station for emergency uses. He noted that emergency response officials in many small towns along the Gulf Coast emptied tankers and service stations of fuel, often not keeping any record of the volume they commandeered.

“I met with the civil defense chief and the police chief in my town and came to an agreement on what I could do for them in an emergency,” he said. “I offered to give them (in the future) one of my stores for emergency uses, but I also told them that I have to have fuel available for my employees and customers. What we’re doing is making an agreement, saying we’ll give you what you need, but you also have to guard us.”

The 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season closed with a record number of storms.

This critical lesson that Sumrall learned from Katrina will be plowed back into the current and future hurricane seasons. It’s just smart to apply common sense to difficult situations, including being nice to emergency officials, he said. “If you go to somebody and come out harshly, they’ll say they don’t need your permission to take your fuel, and they will take it.”

For Johnny Milazzo, president of Lard Oil of Denham Springs, La., effective communication among all his stations will be the new mantra this time around. Lard Oil operates in south-central Louisiana and in Mississippi distributing about 80 million gallons of motor fuel and two million gallons of lubricants annually. It is ExxonMobil’s largest jobber in the state and serves a network of nearly 50 dealers and commercial, industrial and lubricants businesses.

Milazzo noted that his company had in place measures to deal with the effects of hurricanes, such as sub-generators the firm installed at their 15 retail outlets. But, he, too, was unprepared for the likes of Katrina. “Obviously our biggest hurdle was that communications was down, and we could not talk with folks before, during and after the storm,” he said.

Today, the firm’s employees each carry a laminated pocket card with the mailbox phone numbers of their first- and second-line supervisors. Once a storm hits, Milazzo asks his employees to inform a contact whether they are safe able to return to their schedules and, if not, when they expect to come back.

Last August, Lard Oil reopened it retail sites at the rate of three to four stores a day 24 hours after the storm passed through the area. Their trucking fleet did even better, going back on the road 10 hours after the hurricane cleared southern Louisiana, while the wholesale operation restarted the evening following the storm.

Milazzo unabashedly credits his employees for keeping the business going in Katrina’s aftermath. “You’ve got nothing if you don’t have people,” he said. “Eighty to 85 percent of our employees came back almost immediately. It brings tears to your eyes because we had people working around the clock to deliver product, provide service and food and water in a tense and stressful period. In my 25 years in this business, I don’t remember witnessing anything like this.”

As hurricane recovery progressed, this sign advertising for help at a local gasoline station popped up in Purvis, Miss., last December. Patsy Lynch/FEMA photo

Civil defense officials commandeered only one of his tankers during the period, a situation that was far different in neighboring New Orleans where many jobbers and fueling stations were asked to hand over their supply to government authorities. Milazzo, too, is proud he kept his price static for three to four weeks after the storm. “All the credit goes to our suppliers, Exxon and Chevron,” he said. “They literally held those prices for a long period of time. I owe a lot of respect to them.”

Houston’s Sun Coast Resources, a wholesale fuel and lubricants distributor with 6,000 customers in 16 states, also experienced first-hand the mayhem that ensued following a natural disaster. Sun Coast operates about 4,000 above ground storage tanks, owns 140 trucks, provides automatic fueling for generators in addition to other transportation services, fueling equipment, and advice and counsel.

Steve Boyd, its senior managing director, noted that the firm’s emergency fueling services business has grown dramatically since its inception three years ago. The expertise the firm brought to the Gulf Coast region last summer was built on dealing with similar disasters in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. As a result, Sun Coast was able to respond on a moment’s notice to calls for help, recalled Boyd. “We had 40 vehicles and 60 Haz-Mat drivers on the road to Louisiana within hours of Katrina hitting the coastline,” he said. And the firm had placed other equipment in the state days before the hurricane touched land.

As a resource for first-response teams, such as police and fire departments and hospitals, Sun Coast is versed in the speedy deployment of fuel. Such is its tactical strike force capability that the firm can start moving trailers and fuel within three hours of receiving a call. In prior cases, it has been able to send an emergency fueling fleet from its Houston headquarters to Florida within one day.

“We have 200 out of our 300 drivers with the required training to handle emergencies. And we have 50 18-wheelers and bobtails to transport fuel, in addition to motor homes and refrigerated trucks so that our people can stay at a site as long as it’s needed,” said Boyd. About 40 fueling trucks stayed put in Louisiana for months last year, refueling their tanks from suppliers located throughout the Southeast.

Supply was never a problem, said Boyd. “We purchase so much fuel, we have strategic alliances with terminals all over the country.”

During disasters, such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Boyd’s firm sells fuel at cost to affected areas while charging for the cost of the use of its equipment and personnel, he said. “And, we provide a helping hand to those affected, staying open beyond normal operating hours.”

Did his firm fear that the National Guard or the U.S. Army, which needed fuel for its local rescue efforts, could commandeer their fleet? “It happened a couple times, but it was not a big deal,” said Boyd. “When these guys are riding shotgun, you have to use a lot of your persuasive skills so that you can continue to deliver the fuel you promised.”

While the images from Katrina continue to loom large in his mind, Boyd said that the lessons from the event only made his team stronger and more compassionate toward those in need. “Poor people were affected the most,” he said. “That’s what our drivers took away — you’ve got to lend a helping hand with food and water — in addition to supplying fuel.”