As Houston, Texas-based Harris County Federal Credit Union began preparing for Hurricane Harvey’s approach, it called on two of its closest partners for assistance. Those partners—CU*Answers, the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based cooperative CUSO, and Site-Four, the Yankton, South Dakota-based data center CUSO—worked closely before, during and after the storm to execute the various phases of the credit union’s disaster recovery plan. Starting on Monday, August 28^th, the credit union’s in-house operations environment in Houston was rolled over to its backup center at Site-Four in Yankton. Daily operations were performed remotely by members of CU*Answers’ team, with assistance of the Site-Four on-site team, until production was rolled back to the HCFCU data center on Wednesday, September 6^th.

Scott Collins, Executive Vice President at CU*Answers noted: “All teams report that the rollover and rollback processes went very smoothly, but as is the case with all disaster declarations, we will be working closely with HCFCU and Site-Four to document a gap analysis. We learn a lot during every event such as Harvey, and we will be working hard to get even better should one of our partners need us to mobilize.”

Vicki Squires, CEO of Harris County FCU, commented, “On a professional level, the process before and after Harvey provided valuable insight for me and my team. It was encouraging to see teams from across the country working to ensure uninterrupted access to essential member services throughout the storm. We appreciate the assistance of both the CU*Answers and Site-Four teams for making themselves available at all hours of the day throughout the transition of processing to Site-Four and back. We value our partnership with both of our CUSO partners, and couldn’t be more thankful for their professionalism and dedication.”