CSX outreach effort helps employees whose lives were upended by hurricane damage

Matthew Ray, a welder in CSX’s mechanical department, watched helplessly at his waterfront home as Hurricane Helene’s storm surge came barrelling into his neighborhood in Apollo Beach, Fla.

“The water came up like no one’s ever seen it here before,” Ray says. “It was incredible how fast it came up. From the time it came over our dock to the time it came in our pool and in our house was less than an hour.”

Ultimately, the category 4 storm sent 18 inches of water into Ray’s house on the west side of Tampa Bay. “We basically lost everything,” Ray says, noting they had to rip out the lower 4 feet of drywall throughout the house.

Within 48 hours, Ray received a call from CSX headquarters. How was he doing? Did he need any help? If so, what could the railroad do?

A lot, as it turned out.

First, CSX supplied a generator and extension cords so Ray could begin using fans to dry out his home while the power was out. Also included: Gasoline for the generator and Ray’s pickup truck, plus food and water.

But Mother Nature wasn’t finished. Less than a week later, Hurricane Milton swept through and tore off part of Ray’s roof, destroyed the cage over the pool, took out both fences, and one set of sliding doors.

Then good news arrived. CSX’s Employee Disaster Relief Fund cut Ray a check — for $10,000 — to help his family recover from the disaster. In a mid-December interview, Ray said that he had yet to receive a penny from his insurance company.

“That $10,000 right up front — that came in really helpful to get us some momentum, start getting back in the right direction, doing all the things we had to do,” Ray says.

Ray was not alone. The railroad’s employee services team, plus volunteers from elsewhere in headquarters, contacted more than 2,400 employees who were in the path of Helene, Milton, or both to check in and see if they needed support or assistance.

About 300 CSX employees in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee received some sort of aid, from water, ice, and food to showers, generators, and temporary lodging. The railroad also provided pet food, baby formula, and diapers to employee families. In all, CSX provided 8,800 meals and loaned out more than 350 generators plus over 10,000 gallons of fuel to keep them running.

CSX also donated $500,000 to the Employee Disaster Relief Fund, which to date has awarded $438,250 to 153 employees affected by the hurricanes. Typically, the relief fund runs on employee contributions.

The railroad had never mounted an employee assistance effort like this before, says Diana Sorfleet, CSX’s executive vice president and chief administrative officer. It was an outgrowth of training the railroad’s risk management team does periodically to prepare employees for responding to derailments that affect trackside communities.

“That was such a great experience, learning how to care for the community, which completely ties in to how we want to care for our employees,” Sorfleet says. So as Helene was approaching, Sorfleet asked the manager of the employee services team to be prepared to contact employees who might be affected.

“They pulled the ZIP codes of where employees live in those areas and they said, ‘Let’s start trying to contact the people where it seems like there’s the most devastation,’” Sorfleet says.

At the end of the first day, the CSX employee service team had reached 300 employees. “The stories that they were hearing were just heartbreaking,” Sorfleet says.

When employees didn’t answer their phones, CSX police went to their homes to see if they needed help. “That’s when we started coordinating all the support, getting water to people, getting generators to people,” Sorfleet says. “At first, the team said, ‘Oh wait, can we do this?’ I said, ‘Yes, you can do it. This is part of our values that we have to help each other.’”

To speed up the process, volunteers were sought at headquarters. “The team reached out to lots of people — administrative people, finance people, labor people, payroll people — and said, ‘Do you guys want to … help on these calls?’ So that’s how after a few days, we ended up contacting 2,400 employees,” Sorfleet says.

To put food in hungry bellies — for railroaders and local residents alike — CSX employees held barbecues in hard-hit Erwin, Tenn., as well as its hub of Waycross, Ga. The railroad’s facilities were opened up so railroaders and their families could shower. CSX’s relocation team found temporary housing for employees who could not return to their homes. And the railroad offered temporary transfers so that workers affected by long-term track outages on the Blue Ridge Subdivision could keep earning paychecks.

“When you think about what we’re trying to do to change our culture, this to me was just a beautiful example of One CSX and people coming together and doing the right thing,” Sorfleet says.

The goal of One CSX under CEO Joe Hinrichs is to make employees feel valued and respected, which will motivate them to provide better service to the railroad’s customers, which in turn will generate traffic growth.

“It went a long way for our employees to feel proud of CSX for those who helped, but also for those who were helped to feel proud that they work for a company that really cares about them,” Sorfleet says.

The outreach effort was not lost on employees.

One longtime railroader started crying during his initial conversation with the headquarters team because he had never experienced the company asking if he was OK, Sorfleet says.

CSX provided him with a generator. During a followup call, the railroader mentioned that his pregnant neighbor didn’t have power and asked if there was another generator available for her. CSX told him to give the neighbor his generator, and they’d get him another one. “Everyone was taking care of not only themselves, but their community, their neighbors, each other,” Sorfleet says.

Ray, who has been with the company for 18 years, praised CSX’s outreach efforts. “I was genuinely shocked,” he says. “I was impressed. It changed my attitude and my outlook as far as the company goes tremendously.”

Ray says his colleagues felt the same way about the assistance the railroad provided to its employees.

“The way they stepped up and the way they’re doing things now, I think you’re going to see a lot of people’s attitudes change because things were so much different in the past,” he says. “Like I said, it makes you feel really good that they’re on your side and they’re trying to help. It definitely changes your attitude for the good.”