The Home Depot activated its Hurricane Command Center inside its store support center to respond to Harvey.
From the Vinings-based center, representatives from merchandising, operations, transportation, logistics, government relations, and IT are all working.
"There is pre-planning, there is during, and then there is after," said Pete Capel, vice president of field merchandising for The Home Depot. "We have three hurricane distribution centers in the southern part of the United States that stock specific merchandise in case of events like this and we are able to deploy that merchandise quickly to the areas that we need. Our main objectives in all of this are to make sure these communities are taken care of."
The materials they move to the stores primarily are geared toward clean up and recovery efforts: "Batteries, flashlights, water. And there are post-storm kinds of goods depending on the level of damage that happens in an area," Capel said. "That can be clean-up, chainsaws, gloves, trash bags, all the way up to things that you’re going to need to rebuild due to damage.”
As of Sunday afternoon, Home Depot officials said they had closed 42 stores due to conditions related to Tropical Storm Harvey. They said they will reopen the stores as soon as it is safe to do so.
