Infrastructure.

By Ron Starner Executive Director

We hear that term used a lot by people in corporate real estate and economic development. The problem is, we don’t normally consider how critical that term is until it makes its way into the news for all the wrong reasons.

Witness Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Even as we watched the horrible images on the news day after day following Katrina’s deadly path of destruction through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and other Southern states, we couldn’t help but notice the pivotal role that infrastructure played — or, in the most critical cases, didn’t play — in the devastation.

Levees designed to protect the inhabitants and businesses of Louisiana failed spectacularly. Dams designed to protect croplands disappeared. Roads and bridges designed to keep traffic moving got washed away. Oil rigs were dislodged from their moorings. Even the roof of the famed New Orleans Superdome gave way to the onrushing wind and water.

Not since Hurricanes Betsy and Camille — in 1965 and 1969, respectively — had anyone seen a storm slam into the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana with such unrelenting force. But even the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Web page on the protection of New Orleans notes that the level of protection put in place after Betsy "was based on the science of storm prediction as it existed in the 1960s. The question remains, however, whether this level of protection would be sufficient to protect the city from a category 4 or 5 hurricane today — or even a category 3 storm that lingered over the city."

What we do know now, of course, is that the infrastructure that had been built decades ago to defend the Gulf States region against the ravages of Mother Nature was inadequate, at best, and substandard, at worst.

In the weeks and months to follow, blue ribbon commissions and federal task forces will no doubt be assembled to wrestle with the inevitable questions: What went wrong? How could we have been so poorly prepared to face this disaster and its effects? Why were the critical response teams so slow? How do we ensure that a disaster of this magnitude never happens again?

For the members of IAMC and everyone else involved in corporate real estate and economic development, these questions deserve serious thought and detailed answers. For it’s in how we respond now that will determine whether we ever have to face such a colossal loss again.

How well we plan and build the new infrastructure of the Gulf States region will go a long way toward making sure that we never lose as much life and property as was lost in the wake of Katrina.

In this regard, the leaders of this new infrastructure movement will be the member companies and organizations of IAMC — the people and companies who plan, design, develop, engineer and build the infrastructure of this great land.

Let’s hope that, this time, we take our time and get it right.