Getting back to work in Houston after Harvey: Wet walls, ruined equipment, helping workers
Amid piles of wet drywall and ruined electrical systems, Houston businesses are inching back to normalcy. Thousands of companies affected by Hurricane Harvey are tearing down walls and doors, installing dehumidifiers, shuffling work shifts, fortifying secure Internet connections for people who work remotely and pooling funds to help colleagues. More from USA Today:

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Lawmakers consider loosening 401(k) rules for storm victims The recovery work is far from smooth and tasks such as negotiating with insurance companies, finding enough money for repairs and dealing with traumatized, no-place-to-go employees — will take weeks, if not months. Many small business owners without flood insurance, in particular, are possibly looking at years of debt and bankruptcies.

Still, the mood in Houston's business corridors, like the weather, has lifted, says Bob Eury, president of Central Houston, a non-profit group that plans business development in downtown Houston, which daily sees about 150,000 workers. "It'd appear that most employers in downtown are back up and operating," he said Thursday. "It feels like a normal day today. We're open for business. I want to make that clear." The cycle of destruction-and-recovery will replay in much of Florida in the coming weeks as homes and businesses affected by Hurricane Irma also begin to dig out. While Texas and Florida differ in industries, they are among two of the nation's largest and most economically influential states. And the pace of their recovery could have significant consequences for the broader national economy. Energy is Houston's primary economic engine, with many oil companies, refineries, pipeline operators and oil rig equipment makers based in the region. But it's also home to some of the world's most renowned hospitals and a thriving aerospace corridor, thanks to a sizable presence of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The gross domestic product of the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area was $503.3 billion in 2015, the fourth largest of any metro area in the U.S., according to government data, so it's important to the nation that companies and people get back to work as quickly as possible. After Harvey struck the region, roughly 27 percent of all leasable space in Houston, including apartments, could be flooded, or about 600 million square feet, estimated CoStar Group, a commercial real estate information firm. About 70 million of it was office buildings, including low-rise structures. Damage from Harvey would likely reach $150 billion to $200 billion, estimated Moody's Analytics. Buffalo Bayou, the slow-moving river that stretches through downtown overflowed after days of rain, flooding the theater district and other parts of downtown.

Just two blocks from the Bayou, Alley Theatre, an award-winning indoor theatre in downtown, was still digging out from eight feet of water that ruined its basement stage, Neuhaus Theatre The smaller of Alley's two stages, Neuhaus seats 310 and features a variety of plays and musicals, such as Broadway hit "Hand to God" and David Sedaris' "The Santaland Diaries." Water — or more accurately, a black mixture of chemicals, sewage and water — has been pumped out, having left about $15 million of damage. But also destroyed in the basement are five dressing rooms and most of its 100,000 props that were collected over 70 years, says Dean Gladden, managing director of Alley Theatre. "I was thinking how the hell am I going to get the water out of here," Gladden said recounting his first time seeing the damage in person. He was stuck at home with his block flooded and saw the theater damage at first on a Facebook post by colleagues. "(When I saw it on Facebook), I said 'oh, we may have serious problems.'… I couldn't get out. My entire street was flooded." When he finally visited the damaged stage in person the next day, he knew he had to scramble for remediation companies to dry it out, examine air quality and remove mold. But remediation providers were heavily in demand, and he found one through his office building's property manager. "It was my first call," he said. Two blocks northeast, Houston Ballet was dealing with its own remediation problems. Two of its dance studios were submerged with three inches of water. And three different crews weaved through the facility to remove sheet rock and the thick flooring made especially for jumping dancers, as well as replacing costly water pumps and electrical systems. About seven miles south of the ballet company, crews at MD Anderson Anderson Cancer Center, whose main lobby was drenched, deployed dehumidifiers throughout its campus, removed wet drywall and are using infrared cameras to identify unseen wet spots, says Matt Berkheiser, its executive director of environmental health and safety. Meanwhile, some big store operators returned to piles of wet merchandise. A Target store in Humble, Texas, located 19 miles north of downtown, is still closed after it was submerged in six and a half feet of water. Another Target store in South Houston, which had a half foot of water, also remains closed. The retail giant is in the midst of dumping equipment and damaged merchandise to salvage companies. "If (merchandise) is not up to 100 percent of our standards, we will not sell (it)," says John Sheehan, senior group vice president of stores in the Houston area for Target.