Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst: Houston Briefing Offers a Preparedness Playbook

At an HCoM forum for ethnic and community media, Harris County emergency officials, nonprofit leaders and ACoM founder Sandy Close lay out what South Asian and other immigrant households — and the outlets that serve them — need to know before the next storm

By Nasreen Khan | South Asian Chronicle | American Community Media | Prepared 24 July 2026

HOUSTON — With hurricane season deepening across the Gulf Coast, Houston Community Media (HCoM) brought emergency officials, nonprofit leaders and a room full of ethnic and community media outlets together on 22 July for a briefing aimed squarely at the people those outlets serve: households who may not see or trust an official alert until it comes from a familiar voice.

The forum, “Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst — Disaster Preparedness,” was held at the Southern News Group offices on Bellaire Boulevard from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Guests were welcomed and briefed by Nakia Cooper of HCoM, before Harris County’s Brian Murray and United Way’s Brooke Campbell took attendees through what preparedness actually looks like — and why it depends on messengers immigrant communities already trust. Also on hand was Sandy Close, founder of American Community Media (ACoM), whose presence tied the day’s emergency-preparedness message to a broader point: the ethnic and community outlets in the room are themselves part of Greater Houston’s disaster infrastructure.

From left: Brian Murray, Brooke Campbell and Kara Cook-Schultz on the panel at the HCoM disaster preparedness forum on 22 July 2026.

Event at a glance

Event	“Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst — Disaster Preparedness”
Organiser	Houston Community Media (HCoM)
Date	Wednesday, 22 July 2026
Time	11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Venue	Southern News Group, 11122 Bellaire Blvd, Houston, TX 77072
Format	Speaker sessions with dedicated Q&A, a joint panel Q&A, and a networking lunch
Catering	Lunchboxes from Phoenicia’s Specialty Foods

How the session unfolded

The programme moved from a welcome briefing into focused speaker sessions, each followed by dedicated audience questions, before closing with a joint panel discussion, lunch and one-on-one interviews:

11:10 – 11:15 a.m.	HCoM welcome and briefing
11:15 – 11:25 a.m.	Brian Murray, Harris County OHSEM
11:25 – 11:30 a.m.	Q&A for Brian Murray
11:30 – 11:40 a.m.	Brooke Campbell, United Way of Greater Houston
11:40 – 11:45 a.m.	Q&A for Brooke Campbell
11:45 – 11:55 a.m.	Kara Cook-Schultz, Greater Houston Community Foundation
11:55 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.	Q&A for Kara Cook-Schultz
12:00 – 12:15 p.m.	Q&A for all speakers
12:15 – 1:00 p.m.	Lunch, networking and individual interviews

Nakia Cooper — briefing the room

Nakia Cooper Houston Community Media (HCoM)

Nakia Cooper opened the forum on behalf of Houston Community Media, briefing attendees on the day’s agenda and framing the session’s purpose: equipping ethnic and community outlets, including those serving South Asian households, with practical, verified guidance they can pass on directly to their readers and viewers. Her briefing set the tone for a programme built less around official alerts and more around the outlets and voices that carry those alerts into immigrant households in the first place.

Brian Murray — preparedness starts before the forecast

Brian Murray, MPA Deputy Director & Public Information Officer, Harris County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management

Brian Murray, Deputy Director and Public Information Officer at the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (HCOHSEM), has spent his career developing how the county communicates with the public during disasters, including helping establish the first physical Regional Joint Information Center at Houston TranStar. His work developing “JIC Strike Teams” earned HCOHSEM an Outstanding Emergency Public Information Award from the Emergency Management Association of Texas in 2015, and he later helped lead a Federal Communications Commission workgroup that paved the way for Wireless Emergency Alerts 2.0. He now serves on the FCC’s CSRIC IX council, advising on the security of the nation’s emergency communications systems in the era of artificial intelligence and 6G technology.

Key takeaways for households

• Build a plan and supply kit before a storm is even forecast — not after a warning is issued.
• Learn to recognise the moment to take protective action rather than waiting for an official order.
• Know what local resources — shelters, alert systems, county services — are already available in your area.
• Avoid the common mistakes households repeat before, during and after a disaster.

Brooke Campbell — reaching households other alerts miss

Brooke Campbell, CNP, CVA Director of Community Outreach and Disaster Recovery, United Way of Greater Houston; Co-Director, Greater Houston Disaster Alliance

Brooke Campbell, Director of Community Outreach and Disaster Recovery at United Way of Greater Houston and Co-Director of the Greater Houston Disaster Alliance, addressed closing the disaster communication gap and reaching underserved and vulnerable communities — including non-English-speaking and immigrant households that mainstream alert systems often miss. An AmeriCorps NCCC alumna who previously led Volunteer Houston, where she managed a volunteer recruitment platform and spontaneous volunteer coordination during disasters, Campbell now also serves as Secretary on the board of the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition.

Key takeaways for households

• Official alerts often reach English-speaking households first — ask which local outlets carry that same information in your language.
• Vulnerable and underserved households need to be reached before disaster strikes, not only after, through outreach rather than one-way alerts.
• A unified regional communication network is being built specifically to close this gap — community media is treated as a partner in it, not an afterthought.

Sandy Close — why ethnic media belongs in the room

Sandy Close Founder and Director Emeritus, American Community Media (ACoM); Ethnic Media Services

Sandy Close founded what is now American Community Media (ACoM) — known for decades as New America Media and Pacific News Service — and led the organisation for nearly three decades before moving into a Director Emeritus role earlier this year, when Jaya Padmanabhan was named ACoM’s new Executive Director. Close has spent her career arguing that ethnic and community outlets are not simply an audience for public-safety information but a delivery system for it, reaching households that official channels routinely miss.

Her presence at the Houston forum underscored that point directly: the same trust that makes South Asian Chronicle and outlets like it indispensable to their readers day to day is precisely what Harris County and United Way officials said they are trying to plug into for disaster communication. Close’s continuing work with Ethnic Media Services and ACoM’s national network of more than 3,000 outlets is aimed at strengthening that role — not just during hurricane season, but as a standing part of how the region reaches immigrant communities.

The one thing every speaker agreed on: be prepared

Whatever their specific brief — emergency communication, community outreach or long-term recovery — the speakers kept returning to the same starting point: preparedness has to begin before a storm is even named, not after a warning is issued. Taken together, their guidance and HCoM’s own briefing point to a short list of steps every household can take now:

• Stay on top of the news from authentic, verified sources — not rumours or social media speculation — and watch official warnings closely.
• Remember that storms are unpredictable: a system can strengthen or weaken, and change direction, right up to landfall, so take every warning seriously regardless of category.
• Stock essential supplies well in advance — candles, flashlights, a generator, batteries and backup fuel such as gas cylinders — in case power, gas or water service is cut.
• Secure doors and windows before a storm arrives, not while it is already bearing down.
• If evacuation becomes necessary, shut off all utilities before leaving — power, gas and water — to reduce the risk of fire, flooding or further damage.
• Do not wait until the storm is at your doorstep. Prepare early, and don’t put yourself or your family at risk by waiting to see what happens.

A packed room of community and ethnic media

The forum drew a full room of reporters, editors and community media representatives, reflecting the broad cross-section of outlets HCoM and ACoM work with across Greater Houston. Attendees took notes, recorded audio and video, and lined up questions for the panel throughout the two-hour session.

Panellists field questions as media professionals and community representatives fill the room at Southern News Group’s Bellaire Boulevard offices.

Journalists and community representatives take notes during the forum.

Attendees from ethnic and community media outlets follow the discussion.

Why it matters for South Asian households

The forum closed with a joint question-and-answer session for all three featured speakers, followed by networking and one-on-one interviews. Taken together, the day’s message was less about any single checklist and more about where households should look for information they can trust: preparedness is a year-round habit, not a once-a-year scramble before a named storm, and it only works if the information reaches people in a language and through a messenger they already rely on.

For South Asian Chronicle readers, that means the outlets you already read are increasingly being treated by Harris County and regional nonprofits as a front-line channel for disaster information — not a translation of an English-language alert issued somewhere else, but a direct, trusted source in its own right.

A personal note from the author

I am adding this not as a reporter but as someone who has lived through it. I have been through hurricane season in the Houston area for 27 years, and in that time I have experienced more than ten hurricanes. None compared to Hurricane Harvey in August 2017.

My property sits upstream, near a dam. During Harvey, when authorities needed to protect government infrastructure, they released water that flooded our property. Our home was destroyed from the floor to the roof — we lost everything and had to rebuild from scratch: the structure itself, doors, windows, appliances, furniture, clothing, tools and equipment. In total, we lost more than $400,000 in property.

We filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the flooding, and after nearly ten years, we won the case. But the federal government has continued to delay compensation and is now seeking a hearing before the Supreme Court — nine years after Harvey, we are still waiting to be made whole.

I share this because hurricanes and windstorms are unpredictable. They change direction, they strengthen, they weaken, sometimes with little warning. The single most important thing anyone can do is be prepared — well before the storm, not after the warning arrives.