As many Harris County residents heard and felt the impact of the January 24 storm system that swept through the Houston area, causing a tornado to touchdown in east Harris County, the Harris County Flood Control District's Infrastructure, Maintenance Engineering and Community Service divisions suited-up in the storm’s wake to conduct damage assessment and perform clean-up activities.  

In the days following, the Flood Control District Infrastructure Field Crews conducted damage assessments in the impacted areas and collected detailed information with monitoring equipment, which was then uploaded to to Flood Control District systems remotely to the appropriate GIS systems for analysis by the Flood Control District’s Property Management Department in order to plan for repairs and debris clean-up.

The Flood Control District’s Maintenance Engineering Department then reviewed of all the proposed damage repairs. From there, the team collectively provided these assessments to Flood Control District and Harris County leadership to support the development of Harris County’s Disaster Summary Outline, which details the damages that the county has collectively taken from inclement weather events and is then submitted to state / federal agencies to determine the possibility of of state and/or federal disaster related aide.   

While the inclement weathers events that Harris County residents experienced incurred a relatively low amount of damage (when compared to the impact of hurricanes and severe flooding events), Flood Control District staff saw this as a sort-of tune-up for this year’s upcoming Hurricane season.