Hurricane damage will affect US industry for years

The New Orleans and Mississippi coastal regions were the hardest hit, with widespread destruction of homes, retail and wholesale businesses and other facilities, such as electric utilities, telephone companies and schools and churches.
New Orleans, a city of nearly 500 000 residents, suffered flooding throughout 80 per cent of its area, rendering many of its buildings uninhabitable for months because of the flood water, rotting corpses, sewage and the threat of diseases. With more than 100 000 homes badly damaged or destroyed, rebuilding will require months of effort and billions of dollars.
What complicates the problem is that New Orleans’ residents are relatively poor, with a much lower average income than other parts of the country. Many residents will not have had adequate insurance and probably will not have a job when the flooded city is finally pumped dry. With no insurance and probably no job, rebuilding becomes impossible for hundreds of thousands of the city’s residents.
Hardware stores and home improvement/building material retailers, always essential retail outlets whenever a storm hits a city or an area, will likewise find it difficult to play their normal reconstruction role. Ace Hardware, America’s largest wholesaler, says that about 100 of its retailers were in the storm’s path. Its 14 stores in New Orleans proper were all heavily damaged, some totally destroyed.
Hundreds of other retailers in the area belonging to or buying from True Value, Do It Best and Orgill, the next three largest wholesalers, also suffered heavily, and some of those may lack the financial or physical capability to help consumers and businesses rebuild. Even if they have the resources to recover, it will take weeks or months for some of them to be able to supply the rebuilding needs of their areas.
Home Depot operated about ten stores in the New Orleans region; Lowe’s three. Lowe’s said seven of its stores in the area were damaged and closed. Both firms also lost or suffered damage to stores along the Mississippi coast.
The fate of smaller chains in the area, as well as independent building material dealers, may not be fully known for days or weeks to come.
Both Lowe’s and Home Depot, which have reacted swiftly when hurricanes have hit Florida in the past, began offering help in supplying merchandise for reconstruction efforts. Both also contributed money for the stricken regions - Home Depot pledging US $ 1.5 mio in aid, while Lowe’s pledged US $ 2 mio. Ace Hardware is also allocating funds to help retailers in the area rebuild. Other wholesalers probably will be doing something similar.
The accompanying map, which shows the location of Ace stores in the area, shows just how widespread the hurricane damage was. In addition to these Ace stores which were affected, there were hundreds of other home centres, timber/building material and hardware retailers damaged or destroyed.