Harris County Releases Hurricane Harvey After Action Report

Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management’s Hurricane Harvey After Action report is a roadmap to advise and improve emergency management operations.

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The Harris County Hurricane Harvey After Action Report and Improvement Plan, published in April, was originally For Official Use Only, but has been released by Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (HCOHSEM) to advise and improve emergency management operations.

The report includes a timeline of Hurricane Harvey events and an analysis of the county’s emergency management strengths and areas for improvement.

“HCOHSEM initiated the effort to develop the Harris County Hurricane Harvey After Action Report and Improvement Plan to identify strengths and areas for improvement observed during response and recovery activities. The strengths and areas for improvement identified in this AAR affect the ability of the county, as a whole, to respond to and recover from a disaster and are not specific to any one organization. As such, the responsibility for identifying and implementing solutions to ensure strengths are repeatable and areas for improvement are remedied is shared by all Harris County departments, other government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and private sector partners. The resulting improvement plan serves as a roadmap to enhance the outcome of emergency management efforts and potentially guide funding decisions. This roadmap is applicable to all county organizations involved in a broad array of emergency response and recovery activities.

While this process is focused on the events surrounding Hurricane Harvey, it is designed to strengthen our capacity to effectively respond as a region to any catastrophic incident in a highly coordinated way.”

The below report, which can be reviewed or downloaded, is organized as follows:

Command and Control

• Federal, State, and Local (County and City) Coordination

• Emergency Operations Center Operations

• Human Resources

Public Information

• Coordination with Private Sector Partners (Including Utilities)

Operations

Communications Interoperability

• Rescue Operations and Coordination

• Debris Management

• Transition to Recovery

Mass Care and Sheltering

Shelter Establishment and Operation

• Housing

• County Staging Areas (Ice, Water, Food, etc.)

• Volunteer and Donations Management

Review and download the AAR:

Hurricane Harvery AAR_Final by Ed Praetorian on Scribd

Andrea Fox is Editor of Gov1.com and Senior Editor at Lexipol. She is based in Massachusetts.

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