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Even before Katrina hit, quiet heroes were making preparations to save what they could, and their stories overlap and intersect, as they would continue to do until today. Debbie Bridges, Director of Purchasing, stored all the purchase orders on her laptop, taking it with her as she left the College Friday afternoon. When it became more evident on Saturday that New Orleans was in the path of Katrina, Lela Saballos, the person in charge of payroll, anticipating that the city would be without electricity for a few days as with past hurricanes, returned to campus to run payroll, only to discover that IT had already shut down all systems in preparation for the storm.
Although the College had run a complete disaster recovery test in 2004, it had not anticipated a scenario wherein the entire city of New Orleans would be flooded. Once the levees broke and communications were down completely, the back up data stored off site in different locations throughout the city was not accessible, and the College faced the first of many crises: continuing to pay its employees with no payroll data.
As the hurricane moved out of the city on Monday evening and Tuesday morning, it became evident that no one would have access to records of any kind at the College. Steve Cazaubon and Steve Zeringue, who coincidentally had both evacuated to Baton Rouge, made contact with the LCTCS Board Office the Wednesday following the storm. Steve C. realized that the payroll was due out that week, and that some of our employees would be in even more distress without their paycheck. The two Steves immediately began working on a plan to reconstruct the data necessary to pay our employees. In an effort to expedite pay to employees, Steve C. contacted the bank, with the hope of retrieving the most recent direct deposit data. However, he discovered that their main data center located in New Orleans East was one of the areas hardest hit by the storm. The bank made every effort to recover the payroll data, and eventually arrived at the storage site by boat to retrieve some data. The bank sent the files to a remote site for processing but found the data files damaged and that they would not be helpful. Without access to our Human Resource software or any payroll data files, they created an Excel spreadsheet using the 2005-2006 budget information which Steve C. had submitted electronically to the board on the Thursday prior to the storm. The budget contains names and annual salaries which were converted to biweekly gross salaries. From reports previously submitted to the Board of Regents, the Department of Civil Service, the Office of Group Benefits, Teacher’s Retirement and LASERS, they were able to fill in critical missing information as to employee classification, social security numbers, etc. Some information was not available, like federal and state tax withholding information, so the decision was made to take out taxes consistently across the board.
Since the LCTCS Office had been closed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for the hurricane, 27 volunteers from the System Office assisted in entering data into the Board’s PeopleSoft system. The Board’s effort was spearheaded by Lura Kamiya, Director of Human Resources, and by Sharon Dunham, Director of Payroll. Along with Steve Z. and Steve C., twelve System volunteers continued to work through the weekend and the Monday following the storm, which was the Labor Day Holiday. After many stress-filled days, long hours, and surmountable obstacles, the majority of Delgado’s employees had been entered into the system, payroll reports had been balanced and checks were ready to be printed and distributed to over 840 employees. Distribution of the checks began the following day.
Delgado reinforcements from Payroll and Human Resources began arriving on the day after Labor Day, and with Board support, began the massive task of gathering and entering employee deduction data. |
