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Projects and Organizations | Mercatus Center | Gulf Coast Recovery | More #2

In 1996, Alicia Cool opened a floral design company called Bloomers Flowers in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Through her talent and hard work, she quickly expanded the company to three stores. At the same time that she was growing her business, she was also raising a family. So after her third child, she decided to reduce her three stores down to one in Bay St. Louis.

Alicia and her family evacuated Bay St. Louis before Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast. As soon as the storm passed, her husband headed back to survey the damage. While neighbors down the street had eight feet of water in their homes, the Cool's house sits on a bit of a hill so they only had a couple of inches of water in their home.

It was a different story at the store. Bloomers Flowers had about three and a half feet of water. Everything was destroyed. Because of the evacuation orders and the ensuing chaos, the Cools didn't get back to clean the store until several weeks later. By that time, stagnant water had turned to mold.

Although their home also needed repairs and they were waiting several weeks for a FEMA trailer, Alicia and her family decided to focus rebuilding her business. Their decision paid off as she became the first retail store to open in the town following the storm and a haven of normalcy during a chaotic time.

"I think without business you can't have people wanting to come back and stay here so we focused primarily on business–getting it up and running so that we would also have an income to live and build our house back," she told us.

Like many in the Gulf Coast, Alicia found out that she was not adequately insured. Prior to the storm, she was told that she didn't need flood insurance because she wasn't in a flood zone. In the end, the Cools received about $15,000 in insurance money between the claims that they filed for their home and business. Of that $15,000, only $1,000 was insurance payment for their business losses.

Alicia also tried to navigate the SBA and federal assistance programs established after the storm.

"We applied. We got a bridge loan through a bank that was to buy some supplies to get us going again and that was enough just to start," she said. "You know, elbow grease and a lot of effort is worth more than money is." Her experience applying for these loans, though, left her frustrated with the bureaucracy that the federal government set up to manage the recovery. "As far as the national level, I think there's a lot of bureaucratic crap. There's just entirely too much red tape to go through to get funds to the people immediately."

Alicia felt differently about the local and state governments' preparation and response efforts, however. "Our local leaders did an excellent job," she said.

When we spoke with Alicia in January 2007, the storefronts were nearly all occupied at the strip mall where her store was located, and business in the town seemed to be picking up. While her business was going "through the roof" thanks to a couple of large casino contracts, she noted that she definitely had less competition than she did before the storm and attributed it to the uncertainty in the region.

"They're scared to open up. It's tough for someone just to open up. It's a different market now. You don't have the same types of purchases. We've had to reinvent ourselves in some different areas."

Alicia knows all about the necessity of reinvention to an entrepreneur's survival. Since we last spoke with her in 2007, she has reinvented herself again, opening a new premier event planning business with another entrepreneur.

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