How Do You Know How Hard to Hit Someone to Knock Them Out

Hell, Grant Gillespie mused. Hell. Maybe it was time to bond. It was August 30, a solar day later on Hurricane Katrina had slammed into the Louisiana declension. He was crashing at a buddy'south place in Lafayette, due west of the storm's fury, with his wife, Colleen, and their ii kids. The winds had died down, and the rain had passed. Everyone watched as apocalyptic images of New Orleans flooded beyond the TV.

Gillespie, 30, feared the worst. His house, after all, was in Westwego, merely across the river from the besieged city. Was it gone? How would Colleen cope in someone else's habitation? What about school for the children? He couldn't assistance but wonder near two prized possessions: a rare 1977 Picket pickup he had been piecing together and his Fender bass guitar. Shoot, but losing that guitar would exist like losing an arm.

Gillespie, a quondam fe worker, had been a commercial diver for 5 years, during which he had missed more fourth dimension with his wife and family than he cared to think almost. The pay, $80,000 a year and up, was bang-up, Lord knows. But every job meant heading out to sea for grinding, unsafe work without knowing when he'd return–a couple of weeks at a stretch, a month, maybe longer. It was a high cost, the reason many divers were unmarried, divorced, or perpetually clashing about their careers.

And now, this.

So, yeah, maybe he would hang up the wet suit. Find new work in a new town–on dry land this fourth dimension, someplace far from the Gulf, the rigs, the hurricanes.

And yet. He needed that large paycheck. House or no firm. And because of Katrina, in that location would be enough of paychecks for a while. Enough. And then three days afterward, Gillespie was back aboard the Ballsy Seahorse, a 210-foot workboat, watching the shoreline recede as he headed back to the oil patch–back, equally divers put information technology, to "blowing bubbles."

Gillespie works for Ballsy Divers & Marine, a Harvey, Louisiana-based company with 240 employees and $28 million in revenue. Normally, Ballsy's bread and butter is installing underwater oil and gas pipelines. But a big storm changes the game. Fifty-fifty before Katrina's winds had ebbed, Ballsy'southward customers, the large energy companies, were calling: They could assess harm to their rigs above the water by helicopter, just they had niggling idea what lay beneath. Powerful currents tin can bend and break oil and gas lines, flip 'em over similar Tinkertoys. Defined were needed to go hundreds of feet beneath the surface, looking for harm and, eventually, making repairs.

It'southward an enormous opportunity for Ballsy, one of 2 dozen diving operations servicing the Gulf rigs that business relationship for a third of the nation's oil production and a fifth of its natural gas. If this work is done well, information technology could lead to years of follow-on contracts. Before Katrina hit, after all, Epic'south divers were nevertheless patching pipelines damaged by Hurricane Ivan a year before. And Ivan, he was a baby storm next to this mother.

Only here's the problem: Katrina pummeled Ballsy and its people, too. The hurricane tossed bricks from the second floor of the company'due south headquarters only outside New Orleans and snaked under the roof, flooding carpets and leaving freckles of black mold on sheetrock. Information technology left dozens of employees homeless, rebuilding, or taking in desperate relatives for who knows how long. A few lost everything.

"Our job is to look under the surface," says Julie Rodriguez, Epic's CEO. But fifty-fifty as divers look at (or sometimes, for) pipes on the Gulf floor, Epic's employees are doing damage assessment of their own, reckoning with their futures. What volition become of their homes, their families, their communities? How volition they rebuild their visitor–and how will they manage their upended lives in the meantime?

Everyone says they're fine. Just they're not, not actually. Non fifty-fifty the divers, the ultimate tough guys who are expert at compartmentalizing their lives onshore and off. When you lot're working 200 feet underwater with little visibility, operating heavy machinery while continued to the surface by a single air hose, you sort of take to focus on your work. "Normally it's okay," says Gillespie. "The hire's paid, you got money in the bank, and you call dwelling every few days to make sure things are on the upwardly and up. Now it'southward 'Aw, shit, what a mess.' "

The Friday before had been business concern equally usual. Katrina was just another hurricane, one of many the divers monitor through the flavour. It looked bad, simply non a sure cataclysm. "We said we'd sentinel it," says John Herren, director of diving operations.

Overnight, though, Katrina was upgraded to a category-3 storm, spring for New Orleans. Saturday morn, Rodriguez raced to the Harvey part with her husband, Roger, Epic'southward chief operating officer. Nearly two dozen employees and relatives sealed computers in garbage bags with twist ties. Sharon Estopinal, director of concern services, grabbed the "black beauty books," which independent corporation papers, and every ledger and checkbook she could observe. IT manager Mike Simoneaux forwarded incoming calls to Epic'southward satellite office in Houston. Finally, they boarded up the windows.

Epic's employees accept done this before, of form. They fabricated the same preparations for Hurricane Cindy in July, only to lookout man with relief as it fizzled into a tropical depression. But Katrina wasn't fizzling. In fact, it was moving too fast. Unremarkably, there would be time for divers to come up aground to board up their homes; at least, Epic would send a crew to do the job. But non all the divers could beat this storm home, and New Orleans was shutting off incoming traffic to allow for evacuation.

Then Herren did what trivial he could. He and John Lariviere, his counterpart in Houston, called Epic's boats and routed the divers (including his younger brother, Dennis) westward, out of harm'southward fashion. And so he and his wife packed three days' worth of clothes, the photograph album from their wedding ceremony last twelvemonth, and one irreplaceable keepsake: the ashes of a honey cat. And they fled to Baton Rouge, Florida, for the night. The Rodriguezes headed to a friend's identify in Lafayette. Simoneaux drove to Houston.

Just Mike Brown stayed. Brownish, Ballsy'south vice president of diving operations, ignored the city'due south mandatory evacuation order, hunkering down instead at abode with his girlfriend in Harvey. "I've never left," he says. "Andrew, George, Alison–I've stayed through all of 'em."

On Monday, August 29, the worst natural disaster in the nation'south history striking the Gulf Coast with a wall of water and winds of 175 miles per hour. Simoneaux, who had barely slept in two days, walked into Epic's Houston role at viii a.m.

He already understood that this was the Large Ane, a storm more destructive than any he had witnessed before. As a teenager, he had endured Hurricane Betsy, which devastated New Orleans in 1965. He was stricken to be reliving that 40 years after.

As Simoneaux described the commotion dorsum in Louisiana, his voice broke and his eyes welled up. "It's hard non to be emotional," he said, "when your habitation and your city are beingness torn up." He started to work, preparing for the Harvey employees who would make it in a few days. He'd have to build a new server from scratch, a monumental job. Just he couldn't focus. All he could think about was New Orleans, now the Large Uneasy. The ii houses that he and his married woman owned. His daughter, who was eight months pregnant.

When the levees broke, "we were beyond tears."

He went dorsum to the Holiday Inn and joined his married woman, Eva, in front of the Tv set. When the levees bankrupt, he says, "we were across tears."

It was a skilful matter that Brown had stayed in Harvey. The mean solar day after the storm passed, he shrugged off the impairment to his roof, hopped in his pickup, and rumbled over fallen branches and through forepart yards, by Epic's headquarters and a few colleagues' houses. Amazingly, his cell phone worked–and so in those early on days, he was more useful than CNN. On Tuesday, he got through to Rodriguez. When he described the pitiful land of the Harvey office, it was an easy call: For the foreseeable future, Epic would operate out of Houston.

That first calendar week, Brown assumed a new role as unofficial director of security. He continued patrolling for relatives, friends, and colleagues, and he kept an middle on

$10 million worth of diving equipment behind Epic's building. He had borrowed a double-barreled shotgun to deal with looters, a threat that wasn't so far-fetched. He met a well-armed neighbor who had made a citizen'south arrest after teenagers broke into one diver'due south apartment.

As chaos gripped other parts of the city, local constabulary enforcement encouraged residents to leave. There was no ability, clean water, nearby food, paper, nothing. Not surprisingly, Brown wasn't going anywhere. He had plenty of canned goods. And his truck. And a job to exercise.

Julie Rodriguez, 47, is a blond, tanned woman with a N'Awlens accent and hot-pink manicured toenails. Her office back in Harvey had looked just as put together, with brown marble wallpaper and white wainscoting that belied the gritty work of connecting pipeline. When the time came to evacuate, she packed nine pairs of shoes, including her beloved Jimmy Choos.

Rodriguez grew up around Epic, which her begetter cofounded in 1972. She answered phones as a teenager, soaked up the business, and purchased it in 1991, becoming CEO. She has never dived, but she has a fiery, in-charge way that suggests she'southward not intimidated by the manlike culture of her manufacture.

Ballsy's seven-person Houston office is now home to 19 employees and counting. The seating plan has already been redrawn three times. A Mail-it Annotation on Rodriguez'due south desk reads, "From the penthouse to the outhouse." Notwithstanding, she seems unruffled past the endless dubiety. Whether or not the Harvey office will exist torn down. When employees will be allowed back into Jefferson Parish. Where she'll exist working next calendar month. One minute she'southward talking to the landlord in Houston near expanding into the adjacent suite. The next, she's looking into a six-month charter for an empty building in Harvey.

"I had to say, 'These are your options: Come to Houston to piece of work, or stay dwelling house and collect unemployment.'"

She'due south trying to strike a delicate balance between compassion and pragmatism. Her employees are worried about their homes and families. Indeed, some accept all the same to return to work, and some accept quit. Rodriguez kept everyone on the payroll for two weeks post-obit Katrina, whether they worked or not. Later on that, she says, "I had to say, 'These are your options: Come to Houston to work, or stay home and collect unemployment.' "

Epic's employees know they're lucky. Katrina destroyed other businesses. All the same, they can't contrivance the stress. For Simoneaux, home is the hotel room he shares with his pet bird, a Latino Cockatiel chosen Lady; his wife has relocated with her employer to Birmingham, Alabama. Herren, who carries 3 prison cell phones and whose eyes are bittersweet for lack of sleep, is a six-hour drive from his wife–and from the business firm they left behind with a tree on the new roof.

On September 13, two weeks after Katrina, Rodriguez chosen a staff meeting. "I know this has been hard for everybody, but we accept a business to run," she said. "If you lot tin can only hang on a little longer, we're not going to exist here forever." She has hired a contractor to repair the Harvey office, but moving back hinges on getting phone service, which could accept until January.

Rodriguez herself is sleeping on an air mattress at her daughter's flat, borrowing clothes and missing her husband. She hasn't seen her house since evacuating. Her canis familiaris, Jetta, is on Valium, apparently stressed out.

Rodriguez knows simply how she feels.

"The deeper you lot get, the lonelier information technology is," says diver Grant Gillespie. "You showtime thinking, Information technology'south a long way back to the gunkhole. I better watch my ass."

"Blowing bubbles" doesn't do justice to divers' bodily piece of work. Even the routine stuff, connecting new pipelines, is unimaginably difficult. In shallow water, less than 300 feet, the bottom is thick with mud from the Mississippi. You can't see anything, so your hands become your optics. You really train by making repairs while wearing a blindfold. The only sounds at 200 feet are the bubbling and a swoop supervisor on your headset. "The deeper you get, the lonelier it is," says Gillespie. "You start thinking, It's a long style dorsum to the boat. I better scout my donkey."

Especially now. "After a tempest, the biggest fear is the unknown," says Brown, a former diver. Usually, divers know the network of pipelines on the bottom, but a hurricane can obliterate the map. A loose pipe can suck a diver in or blindside him. Although the lines are equipped with shutoff valves to preclude spills, leaks are still a adventure, and then divers slather exposed skin with petroleum jelly to avert oil and other rash-inducing contaminants.

A calendar week afterwards Katrina, Epic has 140 divers and offshore staff on the water, working on nine jobs, more than than one-half related to Katrina. Already it has discovered two platforms toppled over. The pipeline below wasn't desperately injure, only Katrina was likewise powerful not to have washed all-encompassing underwater damage somewhere. "Ivan didn't seem bad at first, but there were pipelines that moved a mile, and some nosotros never found once again," says Herren.

Business is crazy good, actually. Some free energy companies are actually paying to go along divers on hold, to avert losing them to another customer. But the rush to rebuild is causing bottlenecks, as well. John Lariviere has been trying for days to get supplies to the Seahorse, the largest in Epic'southward six-gunkhole armada. As long as food arrives every ten days, a diving boat tin can stay offshore for weeks or months. Only at that place just aren't many boats available; Katrina destroyed thousands of vessels, and anybody in the Gulf is chasing a ride. "It's never been this hard," says

Lariviere. If the Seahorse has to leave the task site and make its own grocery run, Epic loses effectually $50,000 in revenue a day.

Lariviere is a former diver with a churlish, sarcastic demeanor. Information technology's difficult to tell when he's teasing and when he's pissed; if his pressed-lips expression is from the Skoal in his mouth or the intensity of his business organization. Diving, he says, "is a bunch of guys getting together to practise something actually complicated. And things usually go"–he pauses, censoring himself–"let'south merely say, a little crude."

The offset week, Lariviere couldn't detect the gas mixture that defined exhale underwater. He located a supplier in Texas, which meant trucking empty cylinders several hundred miles. And he couldn't utilise Epic's bottles, considering they were stored in Harvey, which was off limits according to whichever official was in accuse that day. Lariviere had to hire containers. That's the cost of doing business concern in Katrina's wake.

The long and tortuous recovery from Katrina continues, with each 24-hour interval bringing small-scale steps toward normalcy. Epic'south Houston office has added 2 more phone lines. In Harvey a construction crew is tearing down the gap-toothed brick wall so it can erect a new one.

So much doubt remains–how long before employees can move abode, how long it'll have to rebuild, the ultimate toll on families, the organisation, the industry. As Epic tries to seize on the opportunity presented by the tempest, it's similar a builder trying to achieve the ceiling of a house without floorboards, merely balancing on the beams. Rodriguez hopes the tragedy will make her visitor stronger, fueling more than collaboration and camaraderie. For at present, though, modest and incomplete remedies must suffice. ("You need to put 'to be connected' at the end of this story," she says.)

It took three weeks, only Gillespie finally got some answers. His wife, Colleen, called the Seahorse out in the Gulf to tell him she had managed to encounter their house. "I figured we had a 50-50 shot," he says. "I found out yesterday nosotros still have a house."

And his truck? His Fender? They were just fine, Colleen assured him. Simply fine. "Yeah," he says, "it was a adept twenty-four hour period."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in Chicago.

penningtonmazies.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/53951/its-never-been-hard