Hurricane Katrina (Request for Industry Related News and Reports)

Any industry news about representatives, dealers, distributors or manufacturers facility damage, or lack thereof, new contact information, reports of organized volunteer efforts by employees, equipment donations to the needy, ANY other programs related to Hurricane Katrina, or a simple "I'm OK")

• Viking (Greenwood, Mississippi) was closed Tuesday but re-opened Wednesday Aug 31.
• Housing:  To Post or Find short term housing opportunities for Katrina evacuees such as apartments, cottages, condos, rooms go to: http://www.katrinahousing.org/
• Distributor Louis W. Howat's offices in Harahan, LA (15 miles west of N. Orleans) suffered no physical damage, but lost power and phones.  Howat is operating out of their Memphis office and can be reached at 800-535-2673.  Though Howat is planning to return to Harahan next week, some of Howat's employees won't have homes to return to.

UPDATE Sept 16:  The LA offices of Howat will be fully operational on September 19
UPDATE Oct 3:  Per Appliance News:

• Electrolux provided 4 field kitchens to help feed military and relief workers.  This is nice.
• Whirlpool is donating 126 washer pairs to the Red Cross to be used at temporary housing complexes, and in a bit of NBC Today Show PR related dementia, we surmise, Whirlpool employees will construct 50 pre-built homes in New York's Rockefeller Center, box them up and ship them to Louisiana and Mississippi.  Employees from Michigan building homes in Manhattan and shipping to Louisiana?
• Maytag in conjunction with Zenon Environmental are providing 80 water filtration systems, each capable of filtering 5000 gallons per day.  The 80 machines are enough to provide drinking water for 600,000 people.  This is more than nice, this is truly useful.

The entire ApplianceAdvisor team thanks these corporations for helping in the rebuilding, but we give special recognition to Maytag for its creativity, practicality and selflessness in their particular donation.  Water safe to drink cannot be branded, but let's try here. 

"Safe drinking water across the gulf coast, courtesy of the good people at Maytag"

UPDATE Nov 9:  Kenyon Custom aided the relief effort with (650) two burner ceramic electric cooktops for use in temporary housing trailers.  Under this Katrina relief contract, Kenyon offered special heavy discounting.  As of November 9, the program continues.  All units were ordered, built and delivered in 3 weeks.