On September 13, hurricane Ike struck the various Solvay sites in the Houston-Galveston area (United States). Thankfully, no Solvay employees or their family members were among the fatalities, but several colleagues did lose their homes. Within the first 48 hours, an emergency operations team from Solvay Solexis was on the ground in Orange assessing the damage and mapping out a plan for bringing the facility back up. The effort included help from the Chemicals and Plastics sectors, including Solvay Advanced Polymers’ electrician Frank Lang and Joachim Lange of DCRT out of Brussels (Belgium) who both temporarily relocated to the area to help address the plant’s considerable power issues.
Just as before in the wake of Hurricane Rita, when faced with the twin tasks of bringing back online a major plant and helping fellow colleagues get back on their feet, the spirit behind Solvay’s Living Values truly came to life.
By mid-October, the site was back up and partially operational in little more than a month. In parallel with these efforts, a cross-functional team in Houston representing legal, communications and human resources started setting up mechanisms for handling charitable contributions. Solvay Employee Relief, Inc., a non-profit organization, was created to financially help employees affected by disaster and allow any Solvay employee to make contributions which are then matched by Solvay. In addition, the team put in place a low-interest loan program to provide funds to affected employees and their families who faced critical housing issues.
This accomplishment becomes all the more remarkable when you consider that many of the team members working on these programs were themselves recovering from the affects of the storm. “I cannot say enough about the tremendous teamwork and spirit our people have shown throughout this experience,” explained René Degrève, Region General Manager, NAFTA. “We call our Solvay Values living, and it is in times like these that we learn why.
On behalf of the entire Solvay family, I send my sincere thanks and appreciation to all of our colleagues who have sent encouragement and support.”
