Hurricanes shut down Walton's Gulf Coast offices

That is, until Hurricane Katrina hit the area.

Now the company has satellite offices in Covington, La., and in the Florida Keys to handle the work that was going on in the two Louisiana offices shut down by the storm.

Company Vice President Rick Quint, who works in the Springfield office, said the physical damage to the two buildings was minimal – he considers the company “pretty doggone lucky” – but the personal damage was much more substantial.

“There are two ladies in our office down there who evacuated and notified us that they are not planning on coming back, and we’ve had three employees out of that office that have lost everything,” he said. “It’s pretty gut-wrenching when you talk about just the people. The manager or the accountant or the administrative assistant (in the New Orleans office) doesn’t have anywhere to work.”

Walton’s New Orleans office does all the company’s military work around the country, including a $90 million expansion at Fort Hood, Texas. Quint said getting the office back to normal will not be easy.

“The New Orleans office is really an odd duck – it does work all over the country,” he said.

“You can’t stop work in California or Florida or Texas if those places weren’t affected. The storm put a strain on all of the projects that we had going out of that office, even if they were thousands of miles away.”

The company has raised more than $27,000 to date internally for affected workers and for packages of clothing, food and toiletry items to send to the region.

[[In-content Ad]]