Labor + Waste = Energy.
When the people along that 90-mile stretch of destruction begin to return, the first job they'll have is rebuilding. The first phase of that job is to remove the untold tons of waste before actual construction begins.
The reality is that the process will be top-heavy, paper-intensive, and involve thousands of out-of-area contractors flooding (no pun) into the area. The locals in too many cases get left out. I think that's wrong, and have a suggestion.
||Give Them Jobs||
Labor
Construction/disaster cleanup is dirty, thankless, and physically hard. It is also rewarding to look back at the end of a day's work and see a piece of property ready to be built on.
Two choices: bring in a damn D-6 @ $150 an hour - plus fuel and rig - and the underground plumbing, the lot, and most of the living vegetation is toast.
Or pay for people over machines. It may take 10 people a full 12-hour day to clear a lot, but there will be no ancillary damage, and 10 people get paid.
+ Waste = Energy
The waste to be removed is damn near immeasurable, and is comprised of almost every known manufactured product used in building and construction. The bad news is some is harmful to humans and other living things. The good news is that hand removal allows the waste to be sorted. It is labor intensive, but in the long run cost-effective
A substantial part of that waste will be combustible: lumber, siding, plywood, flooring, cabinets, doors and trim. So burn it.
It will take a huge amount of equipment to reduce the material to compact, easily transported chips, but costs are reduced if that material is burned in local wood-processing plants.
A quick peruse and I found more than one list of wood processing and/or cogeneration sites in a line stretching from West Louisiana to Florida. A call to the Energy Department's Alternative Energy folk in Colorado confirmed they have the information resources and wherewithal to initiate contacts through their network of producers.
Long Road
This is one of those rare circumstances when top-down is more effective than horizontal information exchange in the initial phase. DOE + America'sJobBank + Trade Groups = work for thousands. To reach that level of coordination the effort must begin now.
Helping people does not mean babysitting them. An unfortunate but common occurrence when the best intentions are out of square to the real need.
The people of the Gulf Coast are more than capable, and definitely willing to work to rebuild. Locals know literally every square inch of dirt in the area. You can't buy that knowledge.
They need the opportunity to rebuild with their own hands. Any company looking to rebuild could do a lot worse than hire from a pool of highly motivated, skilled, and anxious people. All they gotta do is ask.
On second thought, maybe that should be required.
Starting Line
Please don't call any agencies directly involved in the immediate emergency. But if you have good contacts anywhere on the Gulf Coast (one-to-one) you might run the idea by them. I've already read posts on Southern blogs that indicate people who are basically homeless, but safe and fed, want to get back to work.
As always the devil is in the details. But too many times in past emergencies the locals get told to stand back and watch. The least we can do is try to change that.
[Why do I feel the need for a god damn portal for this....]
Update [2005-9-1 12:58:28 by rba]: DOE contact is passing the concept on. Thank you!