CVS decides to stay put, help recovery
With 750
It could close up shops, cut its losses, and move on. Or, CVS could remain open and take on possibly the biggest, most expensive challenge it's ever faced.
CVS decided to stay. The company, based in Woonsocket, R.I., set up mobile pharmacies; gave away thousands of medications to people without prescriptions or even identification; flew in employees from Florida, Michigan, and Illinois; kept stores open 24 hours a day to meet demand; and set up a hot line to locate and help evacuated employees.
''The extent of the damage and displacement is far greater than anything we've ever seen," said Jon Roberts, CVS's senior vice president of store operations. ''Based on the need, we had to stay."
CVS's decision reflects the kind that hundreds if not thousands of companies are facing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some businesses have left the area for good. Others say it's far too early to assess the damage and are waiting to see how the recovery takes shape.
''Every business, from retailers to manufacturers to mom-and-pop stores, is facing urgent logistics decisions and long-term choices about whether to stay or go," said David Bovet, a director at Mercer Management Consulting in Boston. ''It throws everything into question about risk analysis and contingency planning and whether these business can make it work."
CVS said it is committed to returning to New Orleans. The company has 80 stores between Louisiana and Mississippi that were immediately shut down after the hurricane. Nine in New Orleans that remain unreachable, and two in Mississippi, are still closed.
In some ways, the chain ramped up emergency operations faster than government agencies did. Other times, CVS ran into trouble. It didn't have enough employees to work its stores; it failed to get its temporary hiring center up as fast as it planned; and it took more than 12 hours to set up a mobile pharmacy because of difficulties connecting to phone and computer lines. And for the first time in its more than 40-year history, CVS has stores closed with no idea of when they will reopen.
As evacuated residents of New Orleans and the surrounding area poured into Baton Rouge, many without crucial medications or basic necessities, CVS executives knew they had to respond. The problem: Three-quarters of their 1,000 local employees could not be found. So CVS, which has about 5,000 stores nationwide, brought in more than 200 workers from other states to help run the ones in Baton Rouge. They are keeping four stores open 24 hours a day to try to meet demand. At stores overwhelmed by customers, CVS hauls trailers filled with vital supplies such as aspirin, batteries, water, and pop tarts into the parking lots.
Field managers looked for employee housing in Baton Rouge, but with hotels packed with people displaced by the hurricane, the company converted a vacated Gold's Gym into a dormitory. For a week, about 50 employees slept on air mattresses lined up head-to-toe in a space they dubbed the Hilton.
Tim Green, a CVS employee from Oklahoma City, left behind his wife and two daughters to spend the week stocking shelves and helping out at CVS stores in Baton Rouge, where customers like Joycelyn Broggi, 68, showed up with just a handwritten list of medications for her and her husband, John.
The real prescriptions are floating in several feet of water with the rest of their house in St. Bernard Parish. CVS filled the prescriptions, no hassles.
Roberts, who is directing CVS's hurricane effort, said pharmacists are doing the best they can and using their professional judgment in dispensing drugs to deal with a ''tough, tough situation." There has been no real conversation about the legal ramifications, CVS said.
For John Broggi, who waded through water up to his neck to escape his home, the CVS employees ''have been fantastic."
CVS is no stranger to hurricanes or big tropical storms that damage stores and knock out power. Last year, Hurricane Ivan shuttered 80 stores across Florida. Executives say they are ready to make quick repairs, map out alternate transportation routes for shipments, and, if necessary, set up mobile pharmacies -- an idea conceived after a CVS store burned down in the early 1990s.
Before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast, CVS had prepared 30 of these mobile pharmacies at a warehouse in Texas. The trailers are equipped with computers, medications, prescription bottles, and even the same gray carpet found in CVS stores.
When more than 25,000 people took shelter at the Houston Astrodome, CVS said, it dispatched two of these mobile pharmacies after a lengthy approval process that included everyone from the American Red Cross to George Bush Sr.
In the first 72 hours, pharmacists filled more than 10,000 prescriptions, providing insulin to diabetics, heart medication to stroke victims. A typical CVS store fills an average of 1,600 prescriptions per week. The company is keeping track of almost everything but declined to give cost estimates. CVS hopes to get reimbursed.
''My guess is that the federal government will step in and probably cover a lot of this," Roberts said. ''This is stuff we'll work through later."
At Reliant Arena, a convention center on the Astrodome campus, two dozen people lined up at the CVS mobile pharmacy yesterday afternoon for their medications. The area is cordoned off with yellow caution tape. It is usually this busy until 3 a.m.
Sandra Pierce, 56, sat quietly in her wheelchair waiting for nine prescriptions to treat her diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. ''This is a big relief," said Pierce, who fled her New Orleans home before Katrina devastated the region. ''I couldn't get my medicine otherwise."
Christina c'de Baca, a pharmacy trainer at the mobile pharmacy, has worked 12-hour shifts for more than a week and often stays longer. The 27-year-old has started pushing around people in wheelchairs, who are often dropped off at the pharmacy without a way to get back to their temporary quarters in the Astrodome.
''I cried all the way home yesterday," c'de Baca said. ''I wish I could do more."
As evacuees are transferred out of the Astrodome over the coming weeks, CVS hopes to reduce its massive presence at the mobile pharmacies so it can find a more permanent way to serve the hurricane victims. But Roberts says the company will be there as long as it's needed.
At the same time, CVS is setting up recruiting trailers across Louisiana and planning to hold a job fair at a local motel in the next two weeks. One recruiting trailer was supposed to open on Friday in Kenner, La., about 14 miles from New Orleans, but transportation troubles held up necessary computer equipment.
In New Orleans, where the city is under forced evacuation, there is no way to assess the damage at its nine stores. Roberts says the company wants to reopen the stores as soon as possible and have its employees return.
Tomorrow, CVS is setting up a toll-free number (1-800-770-3810) and running radio and print advertisements to try to reach its hundreds of missing workers.
''The hardest thing is not knowing," Roberts said. ''We can't assess the damage on these stores. We don't know where our employees are. It's just extremely difficult."
Sasha Talcott in Baton Rouge and Tatsha Robertson in Houston of the Globe staff contributed to this story. Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com. 
