August 18, 2006
LIFE AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA
As many of you know we lost everything during Hurricane Katrina. We’ve attached photos of our warehouse after the storm. You can see all our hard work and labor turned into a messy stinky mush.
After the storm we evacuated to family in New Port Richey, Florida. We lived with them for almost 2 months. You can’t say enough about having close family. I don’t know what we would have done if they hadn’t welcomed us into their lives and homes.
Right after the storm realizing that New Orleans was under water and that we weren’t going home, I quickly realized that I had the contract for Paul McCartney’s, Weezer’s and Green Day’s Concert Tours. I had to get back in business!
I contacted the manufacturer of my guillotine cutting machine and they told me about a distributor who was located in Lutz, Florida. I immediately contacted him and he told me about a warehouse he had just rented in St. Petersburg, Florida, which had a cutting machine in it. We met there and I rented his warehouse on the spot. I called my suppliers and had tissue paper flown in and that’s how I got back into business.
It’s been a struggle having to pay old debt while incurring new debt. Now I know what the words “ground zero” mean. It’s very hard to start over again after you’ve lost everything. I’m very lucky that my customer base is world wide. I can’t say enough about my loyal customers. Hundreds of them emailed us hoping that we were all right. Many of them waited until they heard from us not jumping to a competitor to place their orders. Loyalty is a wonderful gift that they gave me. Thanks to them we’ve been able to start the re-bulding process.
Since my home survived the flooding of the storm (the water came within 2 ½ blocks of my street), I returned to New Orleans and set up a small office there. Life in New Orleans is very challenging. There is still so much trash, debris, ruined cars and homes everywhere. Nightly the local news gives us updates on Katrina related news and business. There is overall a state of depression here I think because so much is still devastated.
I just read a book called “One Dead in the Attic” by Chris Rose. It will make you laugh and cry when you read his impressions after the storm. Now I’m reading “The Great Deluge” by Douglas Brinkley. Mr. Brinkley gives an insight into the city one week after the storm. It’s UNBELIEVABLE how incompetent our local, state and our Federal government reacted after the storm. How unprepared we are for catastrophic disasters in this country! While reading the book you can’t believe you’re reading about a disaster in the United States of America.
Everyone should read this book so they can try to understand the monumental damage Hurricane Katrina caused and how it affected lives after the storm. His book makes you sick and outraged at our leaders. If were not prepared for a natural disaster how can this country coop with a terrorist attack?
I was told that I shouldn’t include any segment in this Blog about Hurricane Katrina but the impact it has had in ruining all we had built in the 3 years I have owned the company is devasting. Since many of you have grown to be friends of the Fun Factory I know you’ve shared in our pain and our courage to start again. We sincerely appreciate you being there for us. We all hope and pray and this hurricane season is quiet and that no one has to go through what the City of New Orleans has suffered from Hurricane Katrina.