Arce Sambilay Console supervisor, Baytown complex “Saturday night, I started my shift, and we were monitoring the radar. At 2 a.m., it started raining, and it never stopped. So we began to shut down the plant, and we went into live-in conditions. I was here for four more days as a live-in. “I’ve lived in Baytown for 30 years, and I’ve never seen as much water on the roads in all that time. At the plant, everybody pitched in. You didn’t have to ask people; they were there. There was never just one person working on just one thing. “It was always at least two people or a team of people responding together. Everybody pitched in.” Reno Castillo Instrumentation specialist, Baytown complex “I wasn’t able to get to the plant. My house has been here 30 years and has never flooded before. The only way in and out was by boat. But I did a lot of troubleshooting over the phone throughout the storm with my colleagues. A friend and I were helping in the neighborhood, and we came back to my place and tied up his boat in my driveway. I got a call and was actually sitting on my wet couch, and we worked through an issue. “Every day, someone from the company would call and ask, ‘Is your family OK? Do you have food? Do you have a place to stay? Do you need help at your house? Do you need gas, dehumidifiers, supplies?’ “And then, when the storm was over, they sent workers here to help tear out Sheetrock,
insulation and flooring. It had been just me, my wife and son trying to get all that work done. Man, what a tremendous difference it made.” Richard Bowen National account manager, Fuels, Lubes and Specialties Marketing, Houston “After evacuating our home, I was safe in a relative’s home and watching news coverage of the storm when the reporter in a boat turned down a familiar street – my street. “That’s when the reality of the situation began to set in. There was our house, on national television. We could see that we had suffered a devastating loss. We were numb. “Then, without us even asking, help began to arrive. An ExxonMobil employee came with cleaning supplies. Then a professional remediation crew, arranged and paid for by ExxonMobil, arrived to clean out our house. “During one of the most difficult times in our lives, the company was there for me. I am truly grateful and thankful for the assistance. It makes me even prouder to say that I work for ExxonMobil.” Steve Garcia Safety coordinator, Baytown complex “One of the things I saw personally was the way the community came together. I saw some of our firefighters from the refinery on TV going into a flooded subdivision and taking people out in their personal boats. It was like they were taking care of what had to be done outside the refinery, while
Beaumont employees helped with the interior demolition at a co-worker’s flood-damaged house
Joey and Laura Hanks spent many hours helping their neighbors and colleagues clean their homes
we were taking care of what had to be done inside the refinery. “Later, I personally participated in the transport of 2,000 pounds of food and a whole lot of water. I can’t even remember how many loads we did.” Dan Misko Engineer, Beaumont complex “The city’s water-treatment facility was knocked out by the flood. So we got a team together to think through, ‘How do we solve this problem?’
“We expanded to about 60 employees and contractors, and we quickly developed a solution: bring in temporary pumps and 600 feet of pipelines, and draw water from the river to the treatment plant. Roads into and out of the city were impassable, so we had to fix this with the people we had in Beaumont. It took all of us working together to secure the resources and materials to actually go out and do this. While we were working to get the treatment plant back,
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