The Quick Response to Hurricane Katrina
Jane Conkin is the owner of Quick Buildings, LLC in Mobile, Alabama. Quick Buildings specializes in custom modular buildings: banks, commercial offices, industrial buildings, scale houses, medical buildings, day cares, schools, retail, and many more. In this article, Jane details her company's efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Quick Buildings Modular is based in Mobile, Alabama, and its owner, Jane Conkin, is familiar with the havoc hurricanes can wreak. “When there’s a disaster, people often need to rent a temporary building,” Conkin says. The company now sells only custom modular buildings, such as classrooms, medical clinics, even a museum — but at the time Hurricane Katrina hit in the summer of 2005, the company had a rental fleet of modular buildings.
With top wind speeds greater than 170 miles (275 kilometers) per hour, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath caused more than 1,800 deaths. It was also the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, causing nearly $106 billion of damage. The hurricane knocked out the power at Conkin’s home and business for two or three weeks. It was hot, but there was no air conditioning. At home, she had a temporary generator that at least kept the refrigerator running.
This office building was leased to Quick Buildings by Vanguard Modular after Katrina. It was a temporary building used by the Housing Board in Gulfport, Mississippi.
Working from home
“So I grabbed all the phones from all the buildings we had available, the MBI directory, and books of inventory that companies had sent me and took them all home,” Conkin recalls. “When people called me looking for a building, I was able to either supply one myself or call other dealers and ask them if they could ship a building to them.”
Her first call was from Blossman Gas in North Carolina — via a Nextel radio. “They’d lost their building and they needed to get tanks of fuel from their facility in Waveland, Mississippi out to people who needed them for cooking.” So Conkin made arrangements for a replacement building to be delivered and installed in Waveland so the company could begin operating again. Because the highways were so badly damaged from the storm, “it took my husband and brother nine hours to drive from Mobile, Alabama to Waveland, Mississippi with one of our buildings. It usually takes an hour and a half.”
Because so many roads were very badly damaged, before each building was transported, Conkin says, “I had to call state troopers to make sure it was even possible to drive a particular route.”
The entire Mississippi Coast had flooded after Katrina and the dentists were in desperate need to lease a temporary clinic. This building was manufactured by AAA,
leased to Quick Buildings by Roger Suggs, who was with Building Systems Services at the time.
The Katrina aftermath
Conkin says that the six months after Hurricane Katrina were very busy. “I talked with many modular companies all over the country to get buildings shipped down to the Gulf Coast so businesses could get their people back to work.”
In addition, she also leased buildings to FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]. In an emergency situation, some of the rules may be temporarily waived, which makes it easier to supply buildings. Conkin explains: “Ordinarily, when a modular building is built in the factory, there’s a label put on it that says it meets the building codes in that state. So, if a building is built in Alabama and it’s going to be located in Alabama, then all it needs is an Alabama label. But if it’s going to be rented in Louisiana, for example, it’ll need a Louisiana label. When the President declares a federal disaster, we can take a building with a North Carolina label on it and bring it to Alabama. That made things a lot easier than they otherwise would have been. Afterwards, the building has to go back to North Carolina.”
Conkin says the biggest challenge during the Katrina disaster was finding enough people at short notice who could install the buildings. “Even though it’s a rush to get a building up in a disaster, you’ve got to install them properly, otherwise you’re taking a terrible risk,” Conkin says.
Tapping into a network for disaster response
Conkin says that it was crucial to her disaster response that she had a network of relationships with other modular building companies. She was able to tap into that network in order to get buildings shipped from all over the United States to the Gulf Coast where they were needed. “It was the network of relationships I had that enabled me to help out in the way that I did after Katrina.”
She says that, these days, such a response would be more difficult. “Modular companies have been consolidating, so there are fewer companies than there used to be. And because the companies are so big, it’s hard to have the relationships with people that I used to have.”
In the absence of these relationships, Conkin suggests a different way the industry could be better prepared to respond to a disaster in the future. “It would be great if MBI could maintain a directory of available inventory. So if there’s a disaster anywhere in the country — it could be a tornado in Kansas or a fire in California or a hurricane in Florida — we could know where there are available units that could be delivered. And it would be great if there was a network of people who could work
on getting those buildings delivered when a disaster strikes.”
These days, Conkin herself is better prepared if disaster strikes again. “Because of hurricanes, I now have a whole house generator.”
“I talked with many modular companies all over the country to get buildings shipped down to the Gulf Coast so businesses could get their people back to work.”
—Jane Conkin, owner of Quick Buildings Modular
About the Author: Zena Ryder is a freelance writer, specializing in writing about construction and for construction companies. You can find her at Zena, Freelance Writer or on LinkedIn.
More from Modular Advantage
How Rebel Concept Harnesses AI as a Design Tool to Improve the DFMA Process
“The complexity of projects and the size of project are so large, and the technology is so complicated that AI would do it so much faster than we are,” says Kris Droszcz, CEO at Rebel Concept. “Everybody’s struggling to control the manufacturing processes according to the design. And I think that’s what AI will do.”
One Answer from AI Can Provide Innumerable Opportunities, says Stack Modular’s Jim Dunn
The Stack AI Engine is not fully functional yet, but it offers an unlimited number of productivity benefits. Currently, the company is using AI for cost estimates, most recently for a project out in California.
GrayWolf: Building the Future of Modular Data Centers to Power the AI Revolution
The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-based applications has created an urgent need for data centers capable of managing massive amounts of data. As businesses across industries increasingly rely on digital infrastructure to power their AI tools, the demand for data centers has skyrocketed.
Artificial Intelligence: Yes, it is a Construction Game-Changer
Much like other sectors of the economy, AI is reshaping construction, revolutionizing how projects are planned and executed across the country. While it is obvious that AI cannot do certain things by itself, like laying bricks, paving roads, or shingling roofs, its impact stands to be both massive and positive.
The Potential and Possibilities of AI for Offsite
AI is everywhere. Many industries have incorporated AI into business as usual with new organizational structures and new dependencies to be more efficient and to automate repetitive tasks. Offsite construction will not be immune to AI’s ubiquity. The technology offers unique benefits to the offsite building process.
Moving from AI Hype to an AI Advantage
Learning about AI will help you see past the overinflated hype and identify the opportunities specific to your own business. Learning about AI is like peeling an onion – each layer reveals something new, and occasionally it might make your eyes water. But in the end, you’ll have all the ingredients you need to cook up some real innovation in your organization.
The Blueprint for Smart and Ethical AI Integration in Your Business
The journey toward smart and ethical AI integration involves crafting a strategic vision that aligns AI’s transformative potential with your organizational goals. True success with AI is measured by its capacity to enhance human capabilities, foster sustainable growth, and generate value for all stakeholders while actively avoiding ethical pitfalls and harmful risks.
Five Factors for Success When Shifting Your Business to Modular
As labor, competitive and cost factors push more contractors and developers to embrace the opportunity to go modular as a first choice and not a last resort, it’s become clear that adopting this new model requires more than just a willingness to make it happen. Here are five factors to consider as your company moves to a modular construction model:
UniCool-Edge: Optimized Cooling Solutions for Modular and Edge Data Centers
In an industry where efficiency, scalability, and security are crucial, the UniCool-Edge™ system is a revolutionary solution for modular data center manufacturers. By offering external mounting for maximum space utilization, energy-efficient cooling, and pre-commissioned reliability, UniCool-Edge helps manufacturers stay ahead in the rapidly evolving AI-driven data center market. As edge data centers continue to expand, solutions like UniCool-Edge will play a vital role in supporting the next generation of modular data centers and their data center infrastructure.
Building Skills in a Virtual World: Immersive Training for the Modern Workforce
As both the hardware and software for developing and deploying XR applications continue to become more affordable, the investment in this technology as a training tool is increasingly appealing. XR also offers several other benefits, including performing potentially hazardous tasks in a safe environment and acquiring new skills without the immediate need for physical materials.