Joe Sobol, owner of Big Easy Construction in New Orleans, has bad news for homeowners who've been calling about roofs damaged by Hurricane Ida or to get an update on renovations that were scheduled before the storm ripped through the area.
The job will cost a lot more than usual -- and take much longer, too.
Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast -- then took its destruction to the Northeast -- at a time when building contractors were already grappling with severe shortages of workers and depleted supply chains. The damage inflicted by Ida has magnified those challenges.
The struggle to find enough skilled workers and materials is likely to drive up costs, complicate planning and delay reconstruction for months.
"My expectation," said Ali Wolf, chief economist at the real estate research firm Zonda, "is that it only gets worse from here."
Consider that Lake Charles, La., 200 miles west of New Orleans, still hasn't recovered from the damage left when Hurricane Laura tore through a year ago.
Meanwhile, shaken by haunting images of surging rivers, flooded roads and subways and other damage caused by the remnants of Ida, lawmakers from both parties are vowing to upgrade the nation's aging infrastructure network.
The challenges facing construction companies stem from what happened after the nation endured a brutal though brief recession when the viral pandemic broke out in March 2020: The economy rebounded far faster and stronger than anyone expected. Businesses of all kinds were caught off-guard by a surge in customer demand that flowed from an increasingly robust economic recovery.
Workers and supplies were suddenly in short supply. For months now across the economy, businesses have been scrambling to acquire enough supplies, restock their shelves and recall workers they had furloughed during the recession.
Construction companies have been particularly affected. Among building executives Zonda surveyed last month, 93% complained of supply shortages, while 74% said they lacked enough workers.
And that was before Ida struck.
"Natural disasters do cause a strain on building materials, reconstruction materials and on labor," Wolf said. "The difference today is that the entire supply chain has been battered even before Ida's occurrence. You really have all these things hitting at the exact same time. Frankly, the last thing the supply chain needed was extra strain."
A result is that the cost of materials and supplies has been surging. Combined prices for windows, doors, roofing and other building products jumped 13% in the first six months of this year, according to Labor Department data. Before 2020, by contrast, such aggregate prices would typically rise a bit more than 1% on an annualized basis in the first six months of a year.
Prices for steel mill products were up more than twofold in July from a year earlier. Gypsum products, which are needed for drywall, partitions, ceiling tiles and the like, were up 22%.
Henry D'Esposito, who leads construction research at the real estate services company JLL, said the toughest challenge in rebuilding now is the delay in acquiring drywall, glass, steel, aluminum and other materials.
"A lot of the materials that you would need for any project and especially something this urgent -- you're not able to get on site for weeks or months," D'Esposito said.
Sobol, in the course of his career, has ridden out some of the biggest hurricanes to strike Louisiana, including Betsy in 1965, Camille in 1969, Katrina in 2005 and Ida last week. On Friday, he received a text from a client who had hired Big Easy for home renovations. The client wanted to know whether the initial cost estimate still stood.
"I said, 'You can probably add 10%,'" Sobol said.
And now the project will probably take nine months instead of six.
"We're having to jump through hoops," said Robert Maddox, owner of Hahn Roofing in Boyce, La., 200 miles northwest of New Orleans. "We're having to pay more for labor. We're having to pay more for supplies. We're having to bring supplies in."
ROOFERS IN DEMAND
The insurance companies that are footing the bill for many of the repairs, Maddox said, can pose an additional burden.
"I've spent more time fighting with insurance companies over prices than I did roofing houses," he said.
Jacob Hodges, co-owner of a family roofing business in Houma, La., complains that shingles are in such short supply that it's hard to buy them in the same color consistently. One day, they're available only in black; the next day, only gray.
Hodges takes what he can get. So do his customers, who are desperate to have their roofs patched up or replaced.
Then there's the labor shortage.
Among workers in short supply are framers, who build, install and maintain foundations, floors and door and window frames; carpenters; electricians; plumbers; and heating and air-conditioning specialists.
"Workers -- they have the power," said Wolf, the economist at Zonda. "They can go where they can make the most money. So if you need access to workers, you're going to have to pony up."
Maddox said typical pay for roofers has soared 20% over the past year or so. Some can earn $400 a day.
"If you don't pay them," he said, "someone else will."
In normal times, demand for their services was so uneven that roofers often split their time working for different contractors.
"Now, we all need them," Hodges said.
Making matters worse, the power is still out in many places, gasoline is in short supply and the Gulf Coast weather is sweltering.
With nowhere to stay, workers involved in reconstruction have to drive in from afar. Maddox said he has roofers commuting from Lake Charles, a three-hour drive from the hurricane zone.
"We're losing half our time driving," he said.
He wishes that hotels that have running water would reopen -- even without electricity -- so workers would have a place to stay.
"Those guys don't mind cold showers," he said.
Weighing the magnitude of the hurricane damage against the shortage of supplies and workers, Hodges envisions a prolonged, grinding period of reconstruction.
"To get everything back like it was," he said, "you're talking ... well, we'll probably be working on this this time next year."
CALL FOR INFRASTRUCTURE
As the deadly storm moved from the Gulf Coast through the Northeast, members of Congress said the deluge offered irrefutable evidence that power lines, roads, bridges and other infrastructure are deteriorating even as storms and other extreme weather are strengthening.
At least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut died as stormwater cascaded into people's homes and engulfed automobiles, overwhelming urban drainage systems unable to handle so much rain in such a short time.
And at least 16 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
"Global warming is upon us," said Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "When you get two record rainfalls in a week [in New York City], it's not just coincidence. When you get all the changes that we have seen in weather, that's not a coincidence. ... It's going to get worse and worse and worse, unless we do something about it."
Schumer and other lawmakers said the catastrophe is the latest example of why the nation needs the nearly trillion-dollar infrastructure bill passed by the Senate last month. He and other Democrats also are calling for passage of President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion, partisan rebuilding plan aimed at helping families and combating climate change.
"It's so imperative to pass the two bills," Schumer said.
Democrats hope to pass both bills by the end of this month, but action on the bipartisan bill may be difficult until the larger package is ready. Progressives have said they won't support a bipartisan bill without strong companion legislation to advance their priorities.
Biden made a pitch for the bipartisan bill Friday, saying it "is going to change things on our streets across the country." He cited the bill's "historic investment" in roads, rail and bridges, as well as clean energy, clean water and universal broadband.
"It's about resilience," Biden said. "Make our roads and highways safer. Make us more resilient to the kinds of devastating impacts from extreme weather we're seeing in so many parts of the country."
The plan includes $110 billion to build and repair roads and bridges and $66 billion to upgrade railroads. It also includes $60 billion to upgrade the electric grid and build thousands of miles of transmission lines to expand use of renewable energy and $47 billion to adapt and rebuild roads, ports and bridges to help withstand damage from stronger storms as well as wildfires and drought.
"If we're going to make our country more resilient to natural disasters, whatever they are, we have to start preparing now," said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.
Cassidy, a lead negotiator on the bipartisan bill, has touted the infrastructure legislation as a boon to hurricane-prone states such as his. "I'm sure hoping that Republicans look around my state, see this damage and say, 'If there's money for resiliency, money to harden the grid, money to help sewer and water, then maybe this is something we should be for,'" he told CNN.
Ultimately, repair and replacement of roads, bridges and other infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Ida and other natural disasters are likely to be funded by Congress as emergency relief money. But the bipartisan bill will be valuable in providing major investments in "future-proofing" infrastructure against climate change and extreme weather such as Ida, said Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington think tank.
LEGISLATION'S FEATURES
The bill would be the first to devote money for "climate resilience," including $17 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers to address backlogs in federal flood control projects.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would receive $492 million to map inland and coastal flooding, including next-generation modeling and forecasts. Another $492 million would go toward improving the resilience of coastal communities to flooding by restoring natural ecosystems.
The legislation also provides $3.5 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help communities reduce the risk of flood damage and $8.7 billion for the Transportation Department to award grants to states to improve resiliency in ports and other coastal infrastructure.
"We have to start planning for what the future might hold and do, modeling that's going to help us predict what these future risks are going to be," FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told "Fox News Sunday," calling the increasing frequency of severe storms that intensify more rapidly "a new normal" because of climate change. "These threats aren't going to go away, and we need to start to reduce those impacts."
The U.S. had 22 climate and weather disasters in 2020 with losses exceeding $1 billion each, with eight such disasters this year as of July 9, according to NOAA. Ida and its remnants will probably cost in the tens of billions, analysts say.
Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., said a bipartisan infrastructure bill is needed, but the one approved by the Senate could harm oil-producing states such as Louisiana by freezing out benefits for states that encourage fossil-fuel production.
The Democratic-only bill is even worse, Graves said, calling it "a final nail in the coffin" to the offshore oil industry, which is already struggling because of the pandemic and the hurricane.
"All this does is benefit Iran," Graves said. "It benefits Russia. It benefits China."
Graves said he would prefer to use emergency spending to help Louisiana and other states hit by the hurricane. That way, money "is tailored to the disaster" and based on need, not ideology, he said.
But Ed Potosnak, executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, said emergency spending, and even the bipartisan infrastructure bill, is not sufficient to address the threat of climate change.
"We have not taken the bold measures we need to protect our families and our way of life and our communities that we cherish," he said.
Potosnak, whose central New Jersey neighborhood was flooded by Ida, said storms are increasing in intensity and frequency, with at least seven "100-year storms" in the past few decades.
"I hope this storm is a reminder to all our elected officials: This is what climate change looks like," Potosnak said. "Congress needs to act to match the challenge we face."
Information for this article was contributed by Paul Wiseman, Alex Veiga, Matthew Daly and Hope Yen of The Associated Press.