Hell, Grant Gillespie mused. Hell. Perhaps it was time to bail. It was August 30, a solar day later Hurricane Katrina had slammed into the Louisiana declension. He was crashing at a buddy's place in Lafayette, west of the storm'due south fury, with his married woman, Colleen, and their two kids. The winds had died down, and the rain had passed. Anybody watched every bit apocalyptic images of New Orleans flooded across the TV.

Gillespie, 30, feared the worst. His house, after all, was in Westwego, just across the river from the besieged city. Was it gone? How would Colleen cope in someone else'due south dwelling house? What most school for the children? He couldn't help only wonder about two prized possessions: a rare 1977 Sentinel pickup he had been piecing together and his Fender bass guitar. Shoot, simply losing that guitar would be similar losing an arm.

Gillespie, a former iron worker, had been a commercial diver for five years, during which he had missed more time with his wife and family than he cared to recall about. The pay, $80,000 a year and up, was great, Lord knows. Only every task meant heading out to ocean for grinding, dangerous work without knowing when he'd return–a couple of weeks at a stretch, a month, perhaps longer. It was a loftier price, the reason many defined were single, divorced, or perpetually clashing about their careers.

And now, this.

Then, yeah, mayhap he would hang upwardly the moisture suit. Find new work in a new town–on dry land this time, someplace far from the Gulf, the rigs, the hurricanes.

And nevertheless. He needed that large paycheck. Firm or no house. And because of Katrina, in that location would be plenty of paychecks for a while. Enough. Then three days later, Gillespie was dorsum aboard the Epic Seahorse, a 210-pes workboat, watching the shoreline recede equally he headed back to the oil patch–back, as defined put it, to "blowing bubbles."

Gillespie works for Epic Divers & Marine, a Harvey, Louisiana-based company with 240 employees and $28 million in revenue. Unremarkably, Epic's bread and butter is installing underwater oil and gas pipelines. Only a big storm changes the game. Fifty-fifty before Katrina'southward winds had ebbed, Epic's customers, the big energy companies, were calling: They could appraise damage to their rigs in a higher place the water by helicopter, but they had little thought what lay beneath. Powerful currents tin curve and interruption oil and gas lines, flip 'em over like Tinkertoys. Divers were needed to go hundreds of anxiety beneath the surface, looking for damage and, eventually, making repairs.

It's an enormous opportunity for Epic, one of two dozen diving operations servicing the Gulf rigs that account for a third of the nation'southward oil production and a fifth of its natural gas. If this work is washed well, it could lead to years of follow-on contracts. Before Katrina hit, afterward all, Epic's defined were yet patching pipelines damaged by Hurricane Ivan a year earlier. And Ivan, he was a baby storm side by side to this mother.

Only here's the problem: Katrina pummeled Epic and its people, also. The hurricane tossed bricks from the second floor of the company's headquarters just outside New Orleans and snaked under the roof, flooding carpets and leaving freckles of black mold on sheetrock. It left dozens of employees homeless, rebuilding, or taking in desperate relatives for who knows how long. A few lost everything.

"Our job is to wait under the surface," says Julie Rodriguez, Epic's CEO. Simply even as divers look at (or sometimes, for) pipes on the Gulf floor, Epic's employees are doing damage assessment of their own, reckoning with their futures. What volition become of their homes, their families, their communities? How will they rebuild their company–and how will they manage their upended lives in the meantime?

Anybody says they're fine. But they're not, not really. Not even the divers, the ultimate tough guys who are expert at compartmentalizing their lives onshore and off. When you're working 200 feet underwater with piffling visibility, operating heavy machinery while connected to the surface by a single air hose, you lot sort of have to focus on your work. "Normally it's okay," says Gillespie. "The rent'southward paid, you got money in the bank, and y'all call home every few days to make sure things are on the upwards and upward. Now it's 'Aw, shit, what a mess.' "

The Friday before had been business as usual. Katrina was just some other hurricane, one of many the divers monitor through the season. It looked bad, but not a certain cataclysm. "We said we'd scout it," says John Herren, director of diving operations.

Overnight, though, Katrina was upgraded to a category-three tempest, leap for New Orleans. Sat morn, Rodriguez raced to the Harvey function with her married man, Roger, Ballsy's chief operating officer. Well-nigh 2 dozen employees and relatives sealed computers in garbage numberless with twist ties. Sharon Estopinal, manager of concern services, grabbed the "black beauty books," which contained corporation papers, and every ledger and checkbook she could find. It manager Mike Simoneaux forwarded incoming calls to Epic'due south satellite office in Houston. Finally, they boarded up the windows.

Ballsy's employees accept done this before, of class. They made the aforementioned preparations for Hurricane Cindy in July, only to watch with relief as it fizzled into a tropical depression. But Katrina wasn't fizzling. In fact, it was moving as well fast. Ordinarily, in that location would be time for divers to come ashore to board upwards their homes; at least, Epic would send a crew to do the job. But not all the defined could vanquish this storm home, and New Orleans was shutting off incoming traffic to allow for evacuation.

So Herren did what petty he could. He and John Lariviere, his counterpart in Houston, called Epic's boats and routed the divers (including his younger brother, Dennis) west, out of damage's way. Then he and his married woman packed 3 days' worth of clothes, the photograph album from their nuptials terminal year, and 1 irreplaceable keepsake: the ashes of a beloved cat. And they fled to Billy Rouge, Florida, for the night. The Rodriguezes headed to a friend'south place in Lafayette. Simoneaux drove to Houston.

Simply Mike Brown stayed. Dark-brown, Epic'southward vice president of diving operations, ignored the city'southward mandatory evacuation club, hunkering downward instead at dwelling with his girlfriend in Harvey. "I've never left," he says. "Andrew, George, Alison–I've stayed through all of 'em."

On Monday, Baronial 29, the worst natural disaster in the nation's history hit the Gulf Declension with a wall of h2o and winds of 175 miles per 60 minutes. Simoneaux, who had barely slept in two days, walked into Ballsy'due south Houston part at viii a.1000.

He already understood that this was the Large 1, a tempest more destructive than any he had witnessed before. Every bit a teenager, he had endured Hurricane Betsy, which devastated New Orleans in 1965. He was stricken to be reliving that 40 years afterwards.

As Simoneaux described the mayhem back in Louisiana, his voice broke and his eyes welled up. "It'due south hard not to be emotional," he said, "when your home and your metropolis are being torn up." He started to work, preparing for the Harvey employees who would arrive in a few days. He'd have to build a new server from scratch, a monumental job. But he couldn't focus. All he could think about was New Orleans, now the Big Uneasy. The 2 houses that he and his wife owned. His daughter, who was 8 months meaning.

When the levees broke, "we were beyond tears."

He went back to the Vacation Inn and joined his wife, Eva, in front end of the TV. When the levees bankrupt, he says, "we were beyond tears."

Information technology was a expert affair that Brownish had stayed in Harvey. The twenty-four hour period after the tempest passed, he shrugged off the damage to his roof, hopped in his pickup, and rumbled over fallen branches and through front yards, past Epic's headquarters and a few colleagues' houses. Amazingly, his prison cell telephone worked–then in those early days, he was more than useful than CNN. On Tuesday, he got through to Rodriguez. When he described the sorry state of the Harvey part, information technology was an piece of cake call: For the foreseeable hereafter, Epic would operate out of Houston.

That offset calendar week, Brown assumed a new role as unofficial managing director of security. He connected patrolling for relatives, friends, and colleagues, and he kept an eye on

$10 million worth of diving equipment behind Epic's edifice. He had borrowed a double-barreled shotgun to deal with looters, a threat that wasn't so far-fetched. He met a well-armed neighbor who had fabricated a denizen's arrest after teenagers broke into one diver's apartment.

Equally chaos gripped other parts of the city, local law enforcement encouraged residents to leave. There was no power, clean water, nearby nutrient, newspaper, nothing. Not surprisingly, Chocolate-brown wasn't going anywhere. He had plenty of canned appurtenances. And his truck. And a job to do.

Julie Rodriguez, 47, is a blond, tanned adult female with a North'Awlens emphasis and hot-pink manicured toenails. Her office back in Harvey had looked just as put together, with brown marble wallpaper and white wainscoting that belied the gritty work of connecting pipeline. When the fourth dimension came to evacuate, she packed nine pairs of shoes, including her beloved Jimmy Choos.

Rodriguez grew up effectually Ballsy, which her father cofounded in 1972. She answered phones as a teenager, soaked up the business, and purchased it in 1991, becoming CEO. She has never dived, but she has a peppery, in-charge style that suggests she's not intimidated past the manlike culture of her industry.

Epic's seven-person Houston part is now home to 19 employees and counting. The seating program has already been redrawn three times. A Postal service-information technology Note on Rodriguez's desk reads, "From the penthouse to the outhouse." Still, she seems unruffled by the endless incertitude. Whether or not the Harvey part volition be torn downwards. When employees will be allowed dorsum into Jefferson Parish. Where she'll be working next month. I infinitesimal she'due south talking to the landlord in Houston about expanding into the adjacent suite. The next, she'south looking into a six-calendar month charter for an empty building in Harvey.

"I had to say, 'These are your options: Come to Houston to work, or stay home and collect unemployment.'"

She'southward trying to strike a delicate rest between compassion and pragmatism. Her employees are worried about their homes and families. Indeed, some take still to return to piece of work, and some take quit. Rodriguez kept everyone on the payroll for two weeks following Katrina, whether they worked or not. After that, she says, "I had to say, 'These are your options: Come to Houston to work, or stay home and collect unemployment.' "

Ballsy'due south employees know they're lucky. Katrina destroyed other businesses. Even so, they can't dodge the stress. For Simoneaux, home is the hotel room he shares with his pet bird, a Latino Cockatiel chosen Lady; his married woman has relocated with her employer to Birmingham, Alabama. Herren, who carries three cell phones and whose eyes are bloodshot for lack of sleep, is a six-hr drive from his wife–and from the house they left behind with a tree on the new roof.

On September xiii, 2 weeks later Katrina, Rodriguez chosen a staff meeting. "I know this has been difficult for everybody, but we have a business concern to run," she said. "If you can just hang on a little longer, we're non going to be here forever." She has hired a contractor to repair the Harvey role, but moving back hinges on getting phone service, which could have until January.

Rodriguez herself is sleeping on an air mattress at her daughter's flat, borrowing apparel and missing her married man. She hasn't seen her business firm since evacuating. Her dog, Jetta, is on Valium, apparently stressed out.

Rodriguez knows simply how she feels.

"The deeper you get, the lonelier it is," says diver Grant Gillespie. "You first thinking, It'southward a long way back to the boat. I amend watch my ass."

"Blowing bubbling" doesn't do justice to defined' actual piece of work. Even the routine stuff, connecting new pipelines, is unimaginably hard. In shallow water, less than 300 feet, the bottom is thick with mud from the Mississippi. You lot can't see anything, and so your easily become your eyes. You actually train by making repairs while wearing a blindfold. The only sounds at 200 feet are the bubbles and a dive supervisor on your headset. "The deeper you get, the lonelier it is," says Gillespie. "You commencement thinking, Information technology'southward a long way back to the gunkhole. I improve watch my donkey."

Peculiarly now. "After a storm, the biggest fear is the unknown," says Chocolate-brown, a one-time diver. Usually, divers know the network of pipelines on the bottom, but a hurricane can obliterate the map. A loose pipe can suck a diver in or bang him. Although the lines are equipped with shutoff valves to prevent spills, leaks are still a take a chance, so defined slather exposed pare with petroleum jelly to avert oil and other rash-inducing contaminants.

A calendar week after Katrina, Epic has 140 divers and offshore staff on the h2o, working on nine jobs, more half related to Katrina. Already information technology has discovered two platforms toppled over. The pipeline beneath wasn't badly hurt, but Katrina was too powerful not to have done extensive underwater damage somewhere. "Ivan didn't seem bad at first, but there were pipelines that moved a mile, and some we never plant over again," says Herren.

Business concern is crazy good, really. Some energy companies are actually paying to go on defined on hold, to avert losing them to another customer. Just the rush to rebuild is causing bottlenecks, too. John Lariviere has been trying for days to get supplies to the Seahorse, the largest in Epic'due south six-boat fleet. Equally long as nutrient arrives every ten days, a diving boat can stay offshore for weeks or months. Only there just aren't many boats available; Katrina destroyed thousands of vessels, and everyone in the Gulf is chasing a ride. "It'southward never been this hard," says

Lariviere. If the Seahorse has to leave the job site and brand its own grocery run, Ballsy loses around $l,000 in revenue a day.

Lariviere is a former diver with a churlish, sarcastic demeanor. Information technology's hard to tell when he'due south teasing and when he's pissed; if his pressed-lips expression is from the Skoal in his rima oris or the intensity of his business. Diving, he says, "is a agglomeration of guys getting together to practise something really complicated. And things commonly become"–he pauses, censoring himself–"let'south merely say, a picayune rough."

The first week, Lariviere couldn't find the gas mixture that divers breathe underwater. He located a supplier in Texas, which meant trucking empty cylinders several hundred miles. And he couldn't employ Ballsy'southward bottles, because they were stored in Harvey, which was off limits co-ordinate to whichever official was in charge that 24-hour interval. Lariviere had to hire containers. That'south the price of doing business in Katrina's wake.

The long and tortuous recovery from Katrina continues, with each day bringing small steps toward normalcy. Epic's Houston office has added two more phone lines. In Harvey a structure crew is violent down the gap-toothed brick wall so it can erect a new one.

So much uncertainty remains–how long before employees tin can move home, how long information technology'll take to rebuild, the ultimate toll on families, the organization, the industry. As Epic tries to seize on the opportunity presented by the storm, it'south like a builder trying to achieve the ceiling of a firm without floorboards, just balancing on the beams. Rodriguez hopes the tragedy will make her company stronger, fueling more collaboration and camaraderie. For now, though, modest and incomplete remedies must suffice. ("You lot demand to put 'to be connected' at the end of this story," she says.)

It took iii weeks, but Gillespie finally got some answers. His wife, Colleen, chosen the Seahorse out in the Gulf to tell him she had managed to see their house. "I figured we had a 50-l shot," he says. "I institute out yesterday we nonetheless have a house."

And his truck? His Fender? They were just fine, Colleen assured him. Just fine. "Aye," he says, "it was a good 24-hour interval."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in Chicago.