BP Texas City Response to Hurricane Ike
BP Texas City
Responds to Hurricane Ike
A Company That Cares
When Ike roared through the area on September 13th, many people in the Southeast Texas area lost so much. Frustrations mounted as people waited patiently – then impatiently – for our leaders to show a timely and adequate response.
Throughout the area FEMA, the EOC, and other agencies struggled to take care of our citizens. The sheer magnitude of the disaster brought logistical, communication and other problems.
The response did finally improve, but when your children are hot, hungry and hurting even a 24-hour delay is a long time.
After the storm I had the privilege of seeing firsthand one of the area’s largest employers – BP –go ahead and respond to the needs rather than wait for someone else to do the job for their employees.
Under the direction of Sheldon Perkins and Bob Merchant, in less than 24 hours BP had set up its Hurricane Assistance Team with more than a dozen large vehicles, support RVs, a mobile command center, fueling capacity, forklifts, and truckloads of portable generators and other essential supplies arriving constantly.
No fuss, no muss, and no missed communications – just a well organized, preplanned effort.
As BP, one of the oft-berated “oil companies” distributed basic survival supplies they touched the lives of thousands of their “family”.
Supplies included work gloves, towels, bleach, batteries, flashlights, bottled water, powdered milk, duct tape, plastic sheeting, laundry detergent, diapers, baby food, peanut butter, tuna, crackers gloves, toilet paper, towels, pruners, twine and much more. And in an area where over 1 million people were without power BP is distributed that most precious of all commodities – portable generators and sufficient gas to run them for at 24 hours. Hundreds and hundreds of generators . . .
As an outside observer it was humbling to see not only the corporate response by BP but the dozens and dozens of BP volunteers who worked many long, hard hours to help their fellow employees. BP cares for its people and its people obviously care for each other.
When people received their generators they were given basic instruction in how to safely use them. This training took time and the wait was, at times, up to three hours. It was not unusual to see BP employees give up a prime place in line to allow vehicles with children, elderly or ill people to go to the head of the line.
For the eleven days of this private relief effort the supply trucks continued to roll, the volunteers continued to work and the need was met. As the mission was completed BP donated truckloads of the remaining supplies to Galveston area relief efforts, a gesture that brought even more comfort to the many people in need.
It would be impossible to name each and every person responsible for the success of this relief program but Bill Mason, of the Texas City plant, and his team deserves special mention for their ability to procure so many supply items in such a short time. Scott Neuhauser and Stuart Montague were key leaders in organizing the logistics of the effort.
The relief center was virtually a worldwide effort, as many of the team members came from areas as far as Alaska, Pennsylvania and even London, rather than stretching the personnel resources of the impacted area. It wasn’t just volunteers and staff in Houston either, in Chicago over 200 people worked around the clock on the logistics of supplying the need for their fellow workers a thousand miles away.
One thing that I have learned this week the initials BP must stand for “Best People”.
(Article published in Galveston Daily News, September, 2008)