Towing begins for thousands of cars flooded by Katrina and Rita

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The cars, still streaked with mud from the floodwaters that covered them, many with broken windows, sprung doors and missing hoods, have mostly been removed from New Orleans streets. Now they will be removed from under the overpasses and empty lots where they were stored.

‘This is a big step for Louisiana’s recovery,” Chuck Brown, assistant secretary of the Louisiana Department of Envir-onmental Quality, said as huge flatbed trucks loaded up the wrecks.

The state has about 100,000 flooded vehicles, state police estimate. There are about 20,000 in Orleans Parish alone.

‘We will eventually have four staging areas to receive cars from all over southern Louisiana,” he said.

DRC Recovery Service’s $33.8 million contract to remove the vehicles, breaks down to about $239 per car, truck, or boat, said Mark Stafford, the company’s chief operating officer. ‘That covers everything from setting up the staging sites, to doing all the paperwork to the actual towing.”

The operation culminates months of wrangling over contracts. The first $62 million contract fell apart when it was revealed that the low bidder was a consortium made up of a tiny janitorial firm from Georgia and a contractor with ruined headquarters in New Orleans. The consortium subsequently proved unable to secure the required bond to compensate the state if they failed to complete the job. The next two lowest bids-$82 million and $120 million-were also unable to put things together. DRC, of Mobile, Ala., ultimately won the contract.

Once the vehicles are moved to staging sites, they will remain untouched for 30 days so owners can reclaim them. If they remain unclaimed, the tires, batteries and fluids will be removed and the rest crushed and sold as scrap.