29 months after Hurricane Katrina and the Slidell campus of the Louisiana Technical College is still a mess. But on Friday, FEMA agreed to pick up the tab for damage inside the building – more than $2 million worth.

“This is a great sign of recovery, and FEMA is pleased to help Louisiana Technical College get students back into the classroom and continue their very important mission of education,” said Michael Wiener, a FEMA spokesman.

Kim Rugon, Provost and Dean of Louisiana Technical College, said the school would use the money to outfit a temporary facility in Slidell.

All of the equipment in the building was literally drowned beneath seven feet of water, and Rugon said the kinds of degrees and certifications provided here were the exact kinds of things needed in the recovery of the entire area.

Rugon said most of her students had jobs waiting for them when they received their degrees.

“Actually, I have people knocking on my door, to train, asking for specialized training, even telling me if I can train them for a semester, they'll take the training from that point and give them on the job training,” Rugon said. “So it's not going to be hard to find a job in New Orleans.”

Carpenters, plumbers and electricians used to be trained at the school, but soon they'll move to a new building, the site where St. Tammany Parish will soon break ground on its University Square – a multi-campus site, where Louisiana Technical College will operate next to Southeastern University, UNO and Delgado.

St. Tammany leaders said they hope to break ground on the site in Lacombe before the end of the year.

“We have been for a long time, people did not know who Louisiana Technical College was, what we stood for,” Rugon said. “But I think partnering with these three other big boys, we're going definitely to get the exposure that we need and we'll be able to offer special training to the citizens of the city.”

Post-Katrina, there's certainly more of a need for technical jobs to do things like rebuild the mess. And that need is not going away anytime soon.