Drew Sachs acts as liaison in recovery effort

BATON ROUGE, La. – Drew Sachs, on leave from his regular job as economic development director for the city of Brewer, isn’t getting much sleep these days. On Sunday, he worked until 1:30 a.m., helping Louisiana state officials draft fast-track recommendations for changing federal guidelines that allot disaster relief dollars to states and municipalities.

He bedded down for a few hours in his customary spot on the floor of a recreational vehicle, but was up again at 5:30 a.m. to prepare for a long-term planning meeting with officials in New Orleans. By 9:30 a.m., he was on the road to what’s left of the Big Easy, taking advantage of the hour-long drive to talk with a reporter.

Sachs, who is representing the big-picture interests of the state of Louisiana in the multiagency hurricane recovery effort here, has worked roughly 90 hours a week without a day off since arriving in this capital city in the middle of September. The Joint Field Operations Center where he spends much of his time is a windowless gray box of a building, a former department store that sat empty for months before it was appropriated for its current use.

“We’re working under less than ideal conditions,” Sachs said Monday with dry understatement. “There are wires and cables running across the floors and hanging from the ceilings. Yesterday, there was a guy sampling the carpet and checking out the air conditioners, looking for potential health problems. We all appreciate the gesture, but it would have been nice if it had been done before we’d all been working there for a month.”

Sachs, 36, is employed by James Lee Witt Associates, a private disaster and national security consulting firm headed by the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the Clinton administration. Sachs worked under Witt at FEMA for almost nine years, then in 1999 moved his young family to Brewer to enjoy the slower pace of a small city.

A few days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Sachs said Monday, FEMA came knocking, asking him to join the recovery effort. Sachs was ready to roll, but since FEMA is now part of the Department of Homeland Security and subject to a cumbersome bureaucracy, it took many days for the agency to process his paperwork.

“I was on standby in Brewer for 11 days, unable to do my job because I knew they might activate me at any time,” he said. When his old boss Witt contacted him about representing the Louisiana governor’s office in the long-term recovery effort, Sachs jumped at the chance to get off the dime and get to work.

“The state was in desperate need of people with experience in disasters,” he said. “The staff was not highly knowledgeable. This is a huge, huge event, and they needed help.”

Sachs’ assignment in Baton Rouge is to aid the governor’s office in working with FEMA and other federal agencies to take advantage of long-term planning opportunities. With 25 of the state’s parishes essentially wiped clean by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, he said, the state must act quickly to adopt building codes, environmental strategies, neighborhood planning and infrastructure policies in areas that traditionally have been unencumbered by such regulation.

“We’ve got billions of dollars flowing into this state in the next few months,” Sachs said. “People will get insurance checks for rebuilding their homes, and there will be approvals granted for rebuilding schools and hospitals. If we don’t make some decisions early on, they may end up spending millions to rebuild a school that has no students or a hospital that has no patients.”

Sachs said getting planners and other officials on the same page has been difficult. In New Orleans, five of the six city planners haven’t been heard from since Katrina struck. “They don’t know where the five are,” he said. “They could have died, or they could be in a shelter somewhere, or be caring for their families.”

Sachs said many of the officials responsible for mapping a long-term recovery strategy for the state are suffering from something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder – the result of having lost so much themselves and still trying to fulfill their public responsibilities.

“A lot of my time initially was spent in building relationships with people who are innately suspicious of outsiders, who feel that ‘unless you’re one of us, you don’t understand us,'” he said. “It’s better now, but I still have to be careful when I’m meeting new people.”

James Lee Witt, Sachs’ employer, said Monday that Sachs has proved himself an excellent liaison between the governor’s office and the multiple players in the state’s recovery effort. “Drew’s doing a fantastic job here,” Witt said. “We can’t thank the people of Maine enough for letting us have him on loan.”

Sachs said his wife, Melanie, has been totally supportive of his commitment in Louisiana. “She was frustrated, watching TV, not being able to help and knowing I could help,” he said. He misses his two young children, Deidre, 7, and Peter, 4 1/2, and is looking forward to going home for a few days toward the end of October.

His work for the city of Brewer is now in the hands of Deputy Director Darcy Main-Boyington. “I have all the faith in the world in Darcy,” he said.

Despite the frustrations and long hours of his work, Sachs readily admitted he’s having a good time in Louisiana. In addition to working closely with state and federal officials to help bring about a careful and considered recovery, he enjoys the high-stakes, day-to-day challenges of the project. As a special perk, he has met briefly with President Bush and comedian Dan Aykroyd, both of whom stopped in at the Joint Field Operations Center to boost morale.

Sachs said he likes being “periodically thrown into situations that are over my head,” adding that most disaster workers are “adrenaline junkies.”

“You never wish a disaster on anybody,” he said. “But if it’s going to happen, it’s really very rewarding to work on it.”