BellSouth said that 13,000 of its employees were affected by the storm and that it would set up tent cities to provide food and shelter. It also will make cash loans.

Getting money to employees remained a top priority on Friday for many companies. Northrop Grumman, for example, flew 3,000 payroll checks to Mississippi from Texas and distributed them in a parking lot at its Pascagoula shipyard. Cullin said the company wanted to fly checks to New Orleans on a helicopter but could not because access to the city's airspace is restricted by the government.

Northrop gave employees a list of bank of bank branches in Pascagoula that would be open through the Labor Day weekend to cash paychecks and said Wal-Mart stores had agreed to cash employee checks.

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Wal-Mart said it would cash government, payroll, insurance and other computer-generated checks at no charge at 126 stores in the Gulf Coast region for at least two weeks. The company also made an Internet messaging system available in its stores and on its Web site for employees and customers to post notes and search for information about friends and family in the affected area.

Harrah's Entertainment, which operates casinos in New Orleans and in Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., and has about 8,000 workers in the affected region, said it was housing some displaced employees in the convention center space at its casino in Tunica, Miss. The company also said it opened at a relief center at its casino in Lake Charles, La.

Marriott Corp., which operates hotels in New Orleans and employs around 2,000 in the region, said it offered bus rides to many employees to Houston and Baton Rouge after the storm and would at least temporarily give workers hotel rooms in those cities until other arrangements could be made.

Some employees went to remarkable lengths to assist colleagues in need. For example, Merrill Lynch financial adviser Ted Longo and his family were trapped in their Slidell, La., home by flood waters, according to an e-mail sent to Merrill Lynch employees.

According to the e-mail, Longo contacted another financial adviser in Austin, Bill Netherton, to see if there was a way Netherton could fly supplies to an airstrip near Longo's home. Netherton found a plane and a pilot and persuaded the Federal Aviation Administration to let the plane fly in without air-traffic control, according to Merrill Lynch.

"Bill and the pilot then flew in the supplies that helped Ted, his family and some neighbors make it through another three days before government relief arrived," the e-mail said.

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