Opinion: Hurricane Katrina’s Lessons
By Bill Graves
President and Chief Executive Officer
American Trucking Associations
This Opinion piece appears in the Oct. 6 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
As we gather in New Orleans for our 2008 Management Conference & Exhibition, it’s hard not to think back to the images of the “Crescent City” in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina. In a matter of hours, New Orleans went from a vibrant tourism destination to a city devastated by flooding. Nearly 80% of the city suffered catastrophic damage and more than 1,400 people lost their lives.
It was impossible to imagine, then, that New Orleans would rebound. Images of the 9th Ward and homes marked with evacuation orders are images that none of us will easily forget.
As the waters from Katrina began to recede, the trucking industry was there — immediately bringing more than 3,700 truckloads of food, water and other essential supplies into the city and donating to the American Red Cross more than $1.5 million in financial contributions earmarked for Katrina efforts. As an industry, we understood the importance of getting New Orleans back on its feet. Yet, on a more personal level, we struggled, like the rest of America, to make sense of their loss.
It’s fitting that we return to New Orleans now. Three years after Katrina made landfall, the city has made great strides toward reclaiming the vibrancy of its past. The Chamber of Commerce will be the first to tell you: New Orleans is open for business.
That kind of resiliency is a something our industry knows a thing or two about. On any given day, we face a multitude of challenges — from regulatory hurdles to bills pending before Congress. In a way, we’ve become modern-day storm chasers. And 2008 has been nothing short of a perfect storm, with record high diesel prices, reduced freight volumes, and an ever tightening economy. But through it all, the trucking industry has kept America moving.
Still, there are a number of valuable lessons we can take from Hurricane Katrina. First, change is inevitable. The New Orleans of today will never be the New Orleans of yesterday. And while the city may have retained much of the same flavor, it always will be thought of as pre-Katrina and post-Katrina New Orleans. The same holds true for the trucking industry. The industry we know today is very different than the industry my father and grandfather knew before deregulation. There have been countless technological, safety and operational advancements. And, it’s safe to say, there will be more to come. The key to New Orleans’ success, and the ultimate success of an industry such as ours, is accepting the changes, adjusting to them and moving forward.
Second, it is important to always be prepared. Any emergency management professional will tell you: Preparation is essential to surviving a storm. Whether it is a simple evacuation plan or a detailed plan for minimizing damage to personal property, having a plan is necessary. This is as true for a Category 3 hurricane as it is for the issues that affect our industry on a daily basis. To remain successful, we also must remain at least one step ahead at all times.
Over the past year, we’ve taken that lesson to heart. With the rollout of our sustainability initiative on May 8, when we announced six recommendations to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, and the creation of the Safety Task Force aimed at further reducing the number of motor vehicle fatalities, we’ve taken great strides toward demonstrating our commitment to the environment and ensuring that our nation’s highways remain safe and the economy continues to move. These initiatives, paired with educating the public and our elected leaders on the industry’s essentiality, compose the three prongs of our reauthorization approach.
And that brings us to the third, and most important, lesson: Ignoring our nation’s infrastructure is a deadly proposition. Post-Katrina reports found nearly 80% of the flooding in New Orleans could have been avoided if the levees had held. Their failure has been called the worst engineering disaster in U.S. history.
Two years to the month after Katrina, the Interstate 35 West Mississippi River Bridge collapsed at rush hour in Minneapolis. Thirteen people were killed and 135 were injured. While it served as an additional wake-up call for our elected officials, we have yet to see any long-term proposals for dealing with our nation’s infrastructure crisis.
It’s safe to say that the 2009 highway reauthorization bill potentially could be the most important since the creation of the highway system. Our elected leaders will be forced to consider financing alternatives and will be tempted by the seeming quick-fix of privatization. It is incumbent upon us not only to keep them focused but also to ensure they do what’s best for America.
In doing so, we must keep in mind Katrina’s final lesson: If we’re unified and share the burden, we’ll be able to accomplish great things.
Bill Graves is a former two-term governor of Kansas. ATA is a national trade federation for the trucking industry with headquarters in Arlington, Va., and affiliated associations in every state. ATA owns Transport Topics Publishing Group.
