Harvey and the Logistics of Recovery

So far, all of the focus has been on rescue and there has been little news about the recovery yet to come. Here are some lessons I saw after Katrina.

White Goods: This is the generic term for large appliances. They will all have to picked up and disposed of. The worst of these will be the refrigerators. Most people, when faced with a refrigerator full of rotten food, will simply duct tape the door shut and drag it to the street. It will be left to the recycler to muck it out. Before it can be crushed, all the refrigerant will need to be removed lest it pollute the air. Imagine doing that to 250,000+ refrigerators.

Cars: After Katrina, the city put out a bid to auto recyclers to collect and crush the thousands of cars that were submerged. There has to be a place to store all these cars (my estimate - 500,000) while they wait to be crushed. Most of them were stored under the elevated highway and they became a magnet for the homeless who lived in them. And before you can crush them, you need to drain the fluids and suck the refrigerant out of the air conditioning system. It is a very labor intensive operation. And I imagine someone had to keep track all the VIN numbers.

Some of the flooded cars will be cleaned up and sold in other parts of the country. Be very cautious if you plan to buy a used car in the next year.

Building Material: The clean up will generate a massive amount of sheetrock, wood scrap, Insulation, furniture and other miscellaneous building materials. These will all have to collected and carted off to a land fill. The debris from Katrina severely stressed the capacity of the local landfill, even after shredding.

The bright spot is that the recovery will generate the need for a lot of low skilled dirty jobs. After Katina, a friend of mine in California complained that all the farm workers were going to Louisiana to find work. One of the things there were doing was mucking out  an industrial freezer in the Port of New Orleans with tons of rotten chicken. My comment was that anytime they preferred to work cleaning out rotten chicken in 100 degree heat to picking apples, they weren't being paid enough.

It will also generate a demand for material for new construction. New Orleans had a very bad experience with Chinese sheetrock. Beware of cheap construction material, especially anything from China.

In New Orleans, they took the park along Westend Blvd and used it store all the trash from the storm. This was an area over 100 feet wide and a couple of miles long. The different categories of trash were stacked 50 feet high while it waited for the shredder. Houston is going to be one giant trash pile for a while.

HAZOP fun

I've been in Houston leading a HAZOP. Those of you in the engineering or construction fields will be familiar with them, but sometimes I think it stands for Herding  Asleep, Zombified, and Oblivious People. This group, however, was an exception to the rule. The team was small and they were driven to finish the exercise instead of second guessing and attempting to re-design the facility. The facility in question was a natural gas storage facility. Excess natural gas (you know, the stuff produced from that evil fracking) is stored in an underground reservoir until it's needed by the Yankees during winter. Then the gas is withdrawn and sent north in pipelines. There are lots of these types of projects going on, both here and in Europe. Passing gas is where it's at these days.

Houston, Again

Another pre-dawn assault on Houston. Outbound trip was uneventful. On leaving Houston the TSA was going through their routine of asking everyone their name. Their FULL name! If you left out your middle name, they asked you what it was. After observing this happen to several of the people in front of me, I stepped smartly up to the podium, handed over my ID and boarding pass and announced my full name. The agent looks up and says, "I haven't asked that yet! How did you know I was going to ask that?!"

"Because you've asked every person in front of me the same question and you ask this question every time I travel though Houston." Duh!

Meanwhile, the TSA "chat down" program being run in Boston is being ridiculed by John Mica, Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee:

During a recent visit to Logan to observe the pilot, Mica said he watched about a dozen officers quiz passengers in the terminal. "I put my ear up and listened to some idiotic questions," he said of the questions that delved into where travelers were coming from, why they'd been there and where they were going.

"I talked to them about their training, which was minimal," he said of his conversations with security personnel. He went on to say that even though passengers selected for further screening were supposed to go through hi-tech scanners, on the day he visited the machines were out of service because there weren't enough trained personnel to run them.

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

Up at O Dark 30 to catch the red eye to Houston for a meeting. Twice this week and once last week. It sure cuts into my nap time. I was glad to find that the chunk of iron in my knee doesn't trigger the magnetometer at airport security. It also passes the strip search machines 2 out of 3 times. The last time, the agent told me he had to pat down my lower leg and I showed him the scar.

The TSA has lost none of its 'tude. A female agent in NOLa got testy with me as I walked up to her podium from the Elite Access lane. She yelled at me to wait on the carpet - something nobody ever does and that the people in the regular line were not doing. Of course, this set me up to tweak her a little bit more and I asked her if she had had her coffee yet. (It was 0545 hrs) She got so irritated even her fellow agent raised an eyebrow at her behavior. Hope today is better for you Officer Clayton. NOT!

TSA's new procedure for engaging travellers in conversation to determine if they are terrorists seems to consist of asking people their name - at least in Houston. Do they think that a determined terrorist is so stupid that he won't memorize his false identity? I had to restrain my self from answering "Jose Jimeniz, the astronaut", but these TSA kids are too young to know that gag. Question: Does working for the TSA give you a bad attitude or do they actively search for people with existing dysfunction?

And United is screwing up a perfectly good airline. All aspects of flying have gone downhill since United took over Continental.

Heard Aound the Office

"Unless their update is the equivalent of converting the Ayatollah Khomeini to Catholicism, their bid is still rejected." - Me in response to a question about a vendor's incomplete bid proposal.

"It's like a Rubiks cube" - Instrument engineer describing the Austrian control logic

"No, its worse. You can solve a Rubiks cube." - My response

Heard Around the Office

"You couldn't light their ass on fire with a blow torch and a gallon of gasoline" - Procurement Manager describing the sense of urgency of the engineering staff.


"As far as I'm concerned, that thing is just a boat anchor." - Engineering Manager to technology vendor describing his newly developed equipment.


"We don't need another boat anchor." - CEO to same technology vendor describing problems with the fabrication of his equipment

Gradients

This morning on the drive to the office, the radio said there was a 25 degree temperature gradient across Houston. Everyone who runs projects know that the problems happen at the interfaces. The weather is no different and I are in one. I felt temperature drop in the 10 minutes between the hotel and the office. Wish I'd a brought a coat!

Today I Was a Windshield

This morning the travel gods smiled upon me.

Arrived at Continental counter to find no line. Breezed through security and didn't get selected for the scanner. My bag dropped onto the carousel just as I walked up to it. Got on the bus to the rental car center and realized I forget to reserve a car. Called Hertz while I was on the bus and 5 minutes later a car was waiting for me.

I wish I knew what I had done to deserve this. If I knew, I'd keep doing it!

Life Lesson

I've been frequenting a Japanese restaurant in Houston. I usually sit at the sushi bar and talk to the sushi chef. It gives me a chance to practice my Japanese. In our conversations I found that he comes from Osaka. I explained that I lived in Hiroshima for 2 years. He has been a sushi chef for 30 years. When I expressed awe at this accomplishment and commented that he must be a sushi master he said, "No. I am not master. I am still studying. If I call myself a master, then I will stop learning and I still have much to learn."

I thought he had a good philosophy. Endeavor to never stop learning as long as you live.

9mm Therapy

It has been a while since I've been on the shooting range. Luckily, there is no shortage of ranges in Houston. So, after work, I went to the nearest indoor range for a little eye-hand coordination practice.

I selected a 9mm Glock 26 from the rental display, bought two boxes of ammo and three targets and went to the range where I was the sole occupant. I set the targets at 9 yards and went to work.

The results from shooting the first box revealed an occasional flinch but mostly a trigger control issue. Things improved on the second box. On aimed slow fire, I put 17 out of 25 in the 10 ring. And all shots were within the 8 ring. In rapid fire, I put 5 out of 25 in the 10 ring and another 16 in the 9 and 8 ring. Its a good way to relieve office induced stress.

Next time, I'll use the snubbie on double action.

Southern Manners

Today I got back to the hotel and went down to the exercise room. I set the TV on Fox News and got on the treadmill. After a while, a 20 something blonde entered the room, immediately grabbed the remote and changed the channel.

W-T-F????

It's common courtesy to ASK before changing the channel in almost every fitness center I have been in. I spent the next 10 minutes plotting my revenge.

I finished, grabbed a towel and glass of water. I then asked blondie where she was from.

"California", she replied.

"That explains it ", I responded.

"What do you mean?", she queried.

"A Southern person would have asked permission before changing the TV whereas people from the northeast and California, do not".

She was so enamored with herself, she didn't see it coming.

Meat Lovers Paradise

Last night I went to a Brazilian steak house, or Churrascaria. It's name was Tradicao. If you love charbroiled meat, go to a churrascaria. It's one price and the waiters bring out skewers of meat for as long as you can eat. Go hungry!

Houston's Mahatma Ghandi District

My hotel is near Houston's Indian district and I was craving Indian food. I went to a little strip mall place called Mezban. It advertised Indian and Pakistani food so I knew it would have spice. A buffet was set up and it was clear that this is where the locals ate. I had pakoras, butter chicken, karahi gosht and topped it off with some kheer. Pakoras are fried onions. Butter chicken is white meat simmered in a coconut curry. Karahi gosht is lamb in a spicy curry of tomato and onion base. Kheer is a rice pudding with a hint of rose water. Knife and fork are optional. They bring naan bread which is used to scoop up the meat and curry mixture.

Tomorrow we havea long meeting to kick off the engineering on this biofuel project, but for now, I am content.