| Course | PU545 Disaster Management |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 9 |
| Paper type | After action report |
| Length | About 1,170 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | Master of Public Health (MPH) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PU545 Unit 9
Twenty-Six Point Four Feet and Six Findings: A Unit 9 After Action Report on Composite Brennock County's April Flood That Traces Each Failure to a Cause Rather Than a Person and Gives Every Corrective Action an Owner, a Date and a Test
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
PU545: Disaster Management
Unit 9 After Action Report
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Brennock County, the April flood and all figures are composite; the after action method and the research cited are real.
The Incident in Numbers
Crest 26.4 feet at Halvern at 11:20 p.m. on April 14, 3.1 feet above flood stage and the third highest on record. Water entered 1,400 homes. Two shelters opened, holding 620 people at peak on April 16. Three hundred and ten dialysis patients required transport, of whom 266 received treatment within 48 hours. Eleven swift water rescues, no deaths, four injuries among responders. The county operated under a local declaration for 19 days. Direct county cost 2.4 million dollars.
What Went Well
Three things are recorded because they should be protected in the next event. The forecast triggers in the mass care annex worked: the first shelter opened on the forecast rather than on a phone call, nine hours before the crest. The electrically dependent patient registry located 143 of 148 households, and the five not found had moved. And the school transportation agreement delivered 22 buses within three hours of request at 1 a.m., which is faster than the plan assumed.
Finding One: Shelter Addresses Published Three Different Ways
What happened: the first public message named the high school, the second named the middle school, and the county website carried both with no opening times. Approximately 70 residents went to a closed building. Why: three agencies had authority to publish, no single approval step existed, and the annex specified the content of the message but not who released it. Corrective action: the public information officer becomes the sole release point, with the shelter list generated from one file held by the shelter team lead. Owner: public information officer. Date: within 60 days. Test: spring tabletop, with the evaluator timing the first message and checking it against the file.
Finding Two: Dialysis Transport Arranged Patient by Patient
What happened: 44 of 310 patients missed a scheduled treatment, and the gap was in transport rather than in treatment capacity. Staff made individual calls for 11 hours. Why: the county held a patient list but no transport plan tied to it, and no agreement with the two centers about who would arrange movement. Corrective action: a written annex for electrically dependent and treatment dependent residents, with a transport provider agreement and a per-center roster, built with both dialysis centers. Owner: public health emergency preparedness coordinator. Date: 120 days. Test: functional exercise moving ten simulated patients. The evidence that missed treatments translate directly into deaths and emergency department visits is why this finding is ranked above the others in the improvement plan (Kelman et al., 2015). The response did not fail because the county lacked a list. It failed because the list had no vehicle attached to it.
Finding Three: Health Department Records at Risk
What happened: staff moved paper vital records to the courthouse at 9 p.m., four hours before the crest, on one employee's initiative. The server remained on the ground floor and survived because the water stopped 6 inches below it. Why: the continuity plan listed records as an essential function but tied no action to a forecast trigger, and the offsite replication request had been unfunded for two budget cycles. Corrective action: forecast triggers added to the continuity plan for records, vaccine and vehicles; offsite replication funded in the next capital cycle. Owner: health officer. Date: triggers in 60 days, replication at budget adoption. Test: the triggers are exercised in the spring tabletop; replication is verified by a restore test.
Finding Four: Long-Term Care Decision Delayed Eleven Hours
What happened: four facilities below the crest were not contacted until 7 a.m., and the decision not to evacuate them was made without a written record of who made it. Why: the authority question had never been resolved, and the plan referenced long-term care facilities in a single sentence. Corrective action: written legal opinion on evacuation authority; a single capability page filed by every one of the nine facilities; the question put through a tabletop of its own. Owner: county attorney and health officer jointly. Date: 90 days for the opinion. Test: the tabletop designed for this purpose, with the time to a correct statement of authority as the measure.
Finding Five: Two Overflow Shelters Had No Generator Connection
What happened: the second overflow site was not opened, and 60 residents were held at the primary shelter above its planned capacity for one night. Why: a known gap, recorded in the annex, unfunded. Corrective action: pre-wired connections at both overflow sites. Owner: facilities director. Date: next capital cycle. Test: a load test at each site after installation. The gap was documented before the event, which is the point the improvement plan makes: the county knew, and knowing without funding produced the same outcome as not knowing.
Finding Six: Volunteers Arrived Faster Than the System Could Receive Them
What happened: approximately 400 unaffiliated volunteers arrived at the two shelters in the first 48 hours. Shelter managers spent an estimated 30 staff hours redirecting them, and 11 were given tasks without any check. Why: no volunteer reception process existed, and the annex assumed the Red Cross would absorb spontaneous volunteers. Corrective action: a volunteer reception site designated with a lead agency and a simple screening step. Owner: emergency management deputy director. Date: 120 days. Test: 50 simulated volunteers at the next functional exercise.
How These Findings Were Produced
Findings come from 34 participant interviews, the shelter logs, the 911 call records, the dispatch timeline and two facilitated debriefs held within 10 days, while memory was still specific. Each draft finding was returned to the agencies named in it for correction of fact, not for approval of the conclusion. The report deliberately uses systems language, so that a finding reads as a missing trigger or a missing agreement rather than as a judgment of an individual, since reports that assign blame reliably stop producing the information the next report depends on (Savoia et al., 2014). The structure also follows the planning principle the county's annexes are built on: every corrective action has to name a position, a trigger or a date, or it will not survive the year (Perry & Lindell, 2003).
Improvement Plan Summary
Six findings, six corrective actions, four owners, and dates between 60 days and the next capital cycle. Two actions require money the county has not yet appropriated, and the report names them as such rather than listing them as planned. The improvement plan is presented jointly to the health board and to the commissioners, and its status is reviewed quarterly, with each action closed only after the test named above has been run and recorded.
References
Kelman, J., Finne, K., Bogdanov, A., Worrall, C., Margolis, G., Rising, K., MaCurdy, T. E., & Lurie, N. (2015). Dialysis care and death following Hurricane Sandy. American Journal of Kidney Diseases, 65(1), 109-115. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.ajkd.2014.07.005
Perry, R. W., & Lindell, M. K. (2003). Preparedness for emergency response: Guidelines for the emergency planning process. Disasters, 27(4), 336-350. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0361-3666.2003.00237.x
Savoia, E., Agboola, F., & Biddinger, P. D. (2014). A conceptual framework to measure systems' performance during emergency preparedness exercises. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 11(9), 9712-9722. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph110909712
What the PU545 Unit 9 assignment asks for
Unit 9 usually asks students to write an after action report from an exercise or a real response, ending in an improvement plan. Open with the incident in figures so the scale is settled before any judgment. Record what went well, which protects practices that would otherwise be changed by accident. Then write each finding in three parts: what happened, why it happened, and the corrective action. Use systems language, so a finding reads as a missing trigger or a missing agreement rather than a failure of character. Give every corrective action an owner by position, a date, and a test that will show whether it worked. Say which actions need money that has not been appropriated. Finally, describe how the findings were produced, including interviews, logs and the review period.
How this PU545 Unit 9 example is built
The report on this page starts with the incident in numbers, then records three things that worked, including shelters opening on the forecast nine hours before the crest. Six findings follow in identical three-part form, and a margin note explains why cause and corrective action are written side by side. The dialysis finding ranks first and a highlighted line states its cause in one sentence, that the list had no vehicle attached to it. A second margin note explains the repeated structure. One finding concerns a gap documented before the event and left unfunded; another covers 400 spontaneous volunteers, included although nothing visibly went wrong, with a third margin note on why. A methods section describes 34 interviews and two debriefs within ten days, and the improvement plan summarizes owners and dates.
PU545 Unit 9 rubric: what earns full points
Rubrics for an after action report put most of the points in the link between cause and corrective action. A finding that names what happened and jumps to a recommendation without a cause loses marks, as does a corrective action with no owner or date. Credit goes to systems language, since reports that assign blame stop producing information. Recording what worked earns points that students often leave on the table. The improvement plan is weighted heavily and is graded on whether each action is testable and whether unfunded items are identified as such. Methods earn credit: interviews, logs, timelines and the interval between the event and the debriefs all matter, because findings collected months later are weaker and a rubric will say so.
PU545 Unit 9 help from the desk
The commonest failure is a chronology with complaints attached, which is not a report. Force every finding into the three-part form and the analysis appears. The second is corrective actions written as verbs without owners, which never get done and score poorly. Third, avoid naming individuals even implicitly, because a report that reads as an accusation will be the last one the agencies cooperate with. Do not omit what went well, and do not record an unfunded fix as though it were planned. Watch the interval too: debriefs held within a fortnight produce specific findings, and a report built on memories three months old will show it. We can write the report for your own exercise or scenario inside two days.
Get a PU545 Unit 9 example written to your instructions
Your PU545 Unit 9 report may follow a real event, a composite scenario or the exercise designed in the previous unit. Share the prompt, the rubric, and any exercise notes or incident summary you have. The first custom sample comes free, within 24-48 hours, with each root cause traced to a system condition and an owned action. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
More PU545 papers and MPH samples
- PU545 Unit 1: Disaster Threshold Discussion Post
- PU545 Unit 2: Hazard Vulnerability Analysis
- PU545 Unit 3: Flood Mitigation Proposal
- PU545 Unit 4: Mass Care and Sheltering Annex
- PU545 Unit 5: Shelter in Place Warning Set
- PU545 Unit 6: Response Failure Reflection
- PU545 Unit 7: Continuity of Operations Plan
- PU545 Unit 8: Tabletop Exercise Design
- PU545 Unit 10: Disaster Response Plan
- PU535 Unit 9: Prevention Point Analysis
- PU525 Unit 9: Home Visiting Analysis Plan
- PU520 Unit 9: Healthy User Confounding Memo
- PU508 Unit 9: Opinion Leader Diffusion Case Analysis
PU545 Unit 9 questions, answered
Where can I find a free PU545 Unit 9 sample paper?
The whole after action report, all six findings and the improvement plan, is open on this page.
What should each finding contain?
Three parts: the event, its cause, then the fix carrying an owner, a deadline and the test that will prove it worked.
Should an after action report name people?
No. Write findings as missing triggers, agreements or funding, or agencies will stop telling you what actually happened.
Why record what went well?
Because practices that worked get changed by accident in the next revision unless somebody writes them down.
How long is an after action report?
Six to seven pages at this scope, with the incident figures, strengths, findings, methods and an improvement plan.