HURRICANE HARVEY RESEARCH PROPOSAL 2

Hurricane Harvey Research Proposal

Hurricane Harvey was a category four tropical cyclone that hit the Americas in August

2017. Even though the most affected areas were the US states of Texas and Louisiana, the
      hurricane also caused extensive damage in countries such as Nicaragua, Honduras, Guyana,
      Cayman Islands, and Suriname (Sebastian et al., 2017). In the US, Hurricane Harvey caused
      damage of close to $125 billion (Sebastian et al., 2017). Many businesses, residential areas,
      critical infrastructure, and factories were damaged by the hurricane. The damage caused by the
      storm is one of the costliest in the US history. Only Hurricane Katrina of 2005 caused similar
      damage.

The sheer scale of the hurricane made it hard to effectively prepare and respond it. As a
result, it led to loss of 106 American lives (Sebastian et al., 2017). Twenty thousand people,
mainly from Houston Metropolitan in Texas were displaced and had to seek emergency shelter
for the duration of the storm (Sebastian et al., 2017). Disaster management efforts were
conducted at both federal and states levels. These efforts included evacuation of people and
protection of vulnerable assets and people. At the federal level, as soon as it became clear that
the hurricane would hit many parts of the US, the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA
activated response operations. The National Response Coordination Centre based in the nation’s
capital of Washington D.C. and Regional Response Coordination Centre in Denton offered
extensive support to the state governments of Louisiana and Texas where the hurricane hit the
hardest (Sebastian et al., 2017). The states, on the other hand, used their state emergency
management units to spearhead response to the hurricane. The federal and state agencies

HURRICANE HARVEY RESEARCH PROPOSAL 3
established common centres of operations to help achieve better coordination of disaster
response efforts.

References

Sebastian, A., Lendering, K. T., Kothuis, B. L. M., Brand, A. D., Jonkman, S. N., van Gelder, P.
H. A. J. M., & Meesters, K. J. M. G. (2017). Hurricane Harvey Report: A fact-finding
effort in the direct aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in the Greater Houston Region.