Early on the morning of September 13, 2007, Hurricane Humberto made landfall less than 80 kilometers from where Hurricane Rita struck two years prior. Humberto, which grew faster than any storm on record from tropical depression to full-scale hurricane, surprised the Texas-Louisiana coast with 137-kph winds and heavy rain that knocked out power to more than 100,000 and left at least one person dead.

Luckily, the more than 300 employees of LANXESS in Orange weathered the storm safely, and damage to the LANXESS site was minimal. In fact, normal operations were resumed within a few days. Yet, while the impact of Humberto was not nearly as severe as Rita, everyone at LANXESS – from the employees in Orange to the Crisis Center team members in Pittsburgh and Leverkusen – was reminded of the devastation of Hurricane Rita and ready to provide assistance accordingly, proving that the lessons learned from Hurricane Rita will not soon be forgotten.

Read more about LANXESS' experiences with Hurricane Rita in the following chapters