No Easy Street

Jim Perrier sets off to work in an old Toyota 4-Runner every morning that his wife keeps begging him to replace. He keeps saying no because he likes the truck and, besides, you don’t get rid of something just because it’s a little banged up. That’s the way it is in Louisiana.

The president of New Orleans-based VAR Universal Data has racked up thousands of miles in the vehicle since Hurricane Katrina made landfall the morning of Aug. 29. He has shuttled between multiple temporary offices, homes and customer sites trying to fix everybody’s problems.

These days, the old SUV is one of the more reliable things in Perrier’s life. His family now lives in three different cities, he’s lost a quarter of his employees, and his customers are demanding attention and resources that he simply doesn’t have. “My father used to say, ‘Worry about the things you can control and don’t worry about the things you can’t control,” Perrier said of the late Jim Perrier Sr., a World War II bomber who flew 21 missions trying not to worry about getting shot down.

These are words Perrier has lived by after Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast and changed his life forever.

Perrier and his family left New Orleans just before Katrina struck and expected to return a couple days later, like they always did when the “experts” warned that a hurricane headed their way would be “the big one.” Katrina, of course, was that storm.

Now Perrier lives during the week in Baton Rouge, where he’s set up temporary offices, while his wife is in New Orleans. One son attends LSU in Baton Rouge; another goes to high school in Lafayette because his former school has not reopened. In some respects, Universal Data is Perrier’s oldest child. He launched the company in 1983 selling high-end word processing solutions to law firms. Like a proud parent, Perrier can recount how he has shaped and reshaped the company over the years to adapt to the ever-changing needs of small businesses. But it all pales in comparison with the changes Katrina has forced on the company. As of last week, Universal Data still hadn’t been able to return full time to its headquarters on the ground floor of the 51-story One Shell Square building, despite regular rumors that they will be allowed to return. “Every week we hear that ‘next week’ [we can] go back into the city,” Perrier said.

Big Questions Remain
It’s going to be a long time before the Big Easy lives up to its nickname again. New Orleans has dried out, and there are cars on the highways again and lights flickering in some neighborhoods. But Perrier and thousands of others are still piecing together their lives, their families, their businesses after a storm that claimed more than 1,000 lives and caused tens of billions in damage.

How do you adapt to a business environment that gets demolished overnight and may never fully recover? That’s the challenge facing Perrier and other Gulf Coast solution providers. “My honest belief was the first week or two nothing would go on but then people [would have] to get their businesses back,” Perrier said. That hasn’t happened.

The odds may well be against Universal Data surviving in post-Katrina New Orleans. While Perrier’s house and his downtown office were spared from severe damage, five of his 12 employees lost their houses, three left the company and none of those who stayed can guarantee they will be there long term.

Then there are the bigger questions: Will businesses return to New Orleans? When will everyday conveniences such as lights, water and mail delivery return? When will the smell go away? “How can you plan?” Perrier said. “Everything you take for granted on a day-to-day basis just ended. “For the next few months, it will be really tough,” Perrier said. “We didn’t service the parts of the city that were destroyed, fortunately. In that respect, we should be OK. [But] I don’t know who will be moving back and who’s not. From a psychological standpoint, that’s harder than anything else.”

So you do what you’ve always done. You go back to work and try to find some semblance of a routine.