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I have been involved with teaching disaster management since the late eighties/early nineties, and one principle has remained unchanged throughout this period of time. As I revise my lecture slides frequently, I wait patiently until the day when I can revise my slides that discuss the well-documented history of communications failures that have occurred at disasters.
I know that Interoperable Communications was on the table for discussion at the local, state, and federal level long before we changed our calendars over on the morning of September 11, 2001! I know that probably since the beginning of time, communication always goes to hell in a hand-basket during disasters! I know that the need for Interoperable Communications has been detailed in “After Action Reports” for as long as we have been writing them. Communication failures have generated lively discussions during hot washes, and have been the beginning point for many“finger-pointing” events.
Communication failures and the lack of interoperable communications contributed to numerous deaths on September 11, 2001 and the 9/11 Commission took great pains to point this out for those with their blinders on to see more clearly. One of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations was for a portion of the broadcast spectrum be reserved for emergencies, a law to put this in place was passed.
Now, nearly five years later, we wait until 2009 for implementation? Since September 11, 2001, most communities have seen a windfall of federal dollars. We have witnessed the purchasing of everything under the sun to assist in preparing our communities for a wide array of eventualities, that may or may not occur—but what have we done to improve upon the one thing that we get a failing grade for every time? COMMUNICATION!
So, my question is, WHY CAN’T WE FIX THIS PROBLEM? We have known of its existence for decades, we watch it’s effects on television in living color, we write chronicles about it, we form committees, we conduct research, we throw money at it like there is no tomorrow, but, why is communication still a problem today in 2006 in the United States? We live in the richest country with an extensive history of technological advances, why can’t we put the processes in place to insure that we can talk to each other when we need to talk to each other the most……in a disaster!
Let’s say there’s a flu outbreak and you need to administer 6,000 doses of vaccine. You estimate that your team will be able to handle 2,000 vaccinations a day. But there’s no way you can do that in your emergency department (ED). How you wish for a location that could provide
easy access for patients who are very young, very old, or in high-risk groups
space enough for hundreds of people to wait in line
room enough for crowd control
close parking for at least 500 cars
a bus or shuttle system to serve those without automobile access
availability for a block of time allowing treatment of patients.
What kind of space would this be? How about a movie theater?
In October 2004, Omaha’s Alegent Health partnered with a local theater to hold a public flu clinic to serve high-risk groups. (Alegent even drew up passes in the design of theater tickets.) The theater was reserved on three successive weekdays for two or three hours (about the same time it takes to snore through the latest from Hollywood).
The event went off without a hitch—which may be of interest to ED managers seeking new ways to handle surge and other traffic concerns. “Theaters are designed for a flow of people,” said participant Peggy Prinz Luebbert, an infection control professional who edited HCPro’s just-released lab safety book Laboratory Infection Control. “Separate entrances and exits were ideal for getting patients in and out quickly, there was space for people in wheelchairs, and some of the smaller rooms in the theater helped us segregate special populations—in our case, children. Most people were in line and out the door in under 30 minutes.”
For more information about the event, contact Peggy Luebbert at pluebber@alegent.com
Feb 22, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – A 44-year-old New York City man has inhalational anthrax—the first US case since 2001—possibly as a result of using African animal hides to make drums, Pennsylvania and federal officials announced today.
The man collapsed and was hospitalized after performing in a concert in Mansfield, Pa., Feb 16, the Pennsylvania Department of Health (PDH) said in a news release. Blood tests at the hospital indicated possible anthrax on Feb 20, and further testing in a PDH lab confirmed the anthrax diagnosis yesterday, officials said.
The PDH said there was no sign of an intentional release of anthrax and no risk that the man would spread anthrax to healthcare workers or others. Inhalational anthrax is not known to spread from person to person.
“The patient has a history of contact with unprocessed animal hides and recently traveled to Africa, where he purchased unprocessed hides, which were then transported to New York City,” the PDH release said. “The patient makes drums from the unprocessed animal hides. Unprocessed animal hides can be a source of anthrax spores.”
Five people died of inhalational anthrax and another 17 fell ill after someone mailed anthrax-laced letters to several US media outlets and a US senator’s office in 2001. But anthrax disease most commonly occurs as a result of contact with tissues or hides of infected livestock or eating undercooked meat from infected animals. Spores of Bacillus anthracis are found in soil in many parts of the world, and the disease occasionally occurs in US cattle.
The drum maker was in fair condition today, according to Dr. Lisa Rotz, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who spoke at a teleconference this afternoon.
“I’m told by the Pennsylvania Department of Health and clinicians treating him that they’re very optimistic and happy with the way he’s progressing,” Rotz said.
The PDH statement listed the patient as being in stable condition at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pa.
Rotz said the “hypothesis” that the man contracted anthrax from the hides he works with is based on interviews with him and his wife and work by New York City and Pennsylvania authorities.
Authorities plan to examine his work and storage area in Brooklyn, N.Y., as well as his home, according to the PDH. Investigators also plan to talk with people who may have had contact with the man’s hides or work area and to contact members of the dance company he performed with.
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the CDC, the FBI, and the PDH are working on the investigation, the PDH said.
Rotz said the CDC reconfirmed the patient’s anthrax diagnosis with additional testing this morning and is running further tests. The agency has assigned physicians who were involved in the 2001 anthrax response to help treat the patient, she added.
In response to questions, Rotz said it was not known specifically how the patient brought African hides into the United States. “We’re working with our division of quarantine and the USDA [US Department of Agriculture] to identify how he was able to bring the hides in,” she said. She explained that the USDA regulates importation of hides.
The concert in which the patient performed was at Mansfield University, the PDH said. The department has sent a team there to talk with people who may have attended the concert, said PDH Secretary Dr. Calvin B. Johnson.
The last naturally occurring human anthrax case in the United States was a case of cutaneous (skin) disease early in 2001, according to Rotz. The country had not had a naturally occurring case of inhalational anthrax since 1976, she said.
A high school student showed in a science fair project that using a clothes iron on mail can kill anthrax-like spores inside – without damaging the contents of the envelope. His research will appear in the Journal of Medical Toxicology in June.
The student didn’t use anthrax in his experiments. Instead, he used another kind of bacterial spore from the anthrax family that is more heat-resistant than anthrax.
He put paper strips with millions of spores inside envelopes, then ironed them at various settings for up to 15 minutes. His findings: an iron adjusted to the highest setting, about 400 degrees Fahrenheit, killed all the spores if they were ironed for at least five minutes.
Bioterrorism expert Michael Allswede, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said people shouldn’t routinely iron their mail. “But should there be another threat like the anthrax attacks in 2001, it would be one of the techniques that could be used by regular people .”
Source: John Scheibe, jscheibe@VenturaCountyStar.com
February 17, 2006
A man who showed up unannounced Thursday at Naval Base Ventura County with skin lesions sparked a long quarantine and fears of
smallpox. Health authorities later determined it was only chickenpox.
The man drove up to the Pleasant Valley Road gate at about 7:30 a.m. Thursday, a base spokeswoman said.
The man was looking for a job. The man produced a Mexican driver’s license and later told the guard he was an undocumented immigrant. The man’s face and arms were covered with lesions.
Authorities took him into custody and transferred him to a holding facility on the base while notifying a base doctor and county health officials.
Sixteen people from the base’s police station who had direct contact with the man were quarantined while authorities tried to determine if he had smallpox.
The man was later placed in an isolation room at St. John’s Medical Center. Officials were taking no chances.
Health officials took a blood specimen along with a sample of a lesion and sent them to a laboratory in Los Angeles for tests.
Test results later showed the man had chickenpox, and base officials
announced at 5:50 p.m. that the 16 people had been released from quarantine.
CDC and the Department of Homeland Security were alerted Thursday to the possibility of a smallpox case.
CIDRAP News: – Two human cases of H5N1 avian flu have been confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in recent days—one each in Iraq and Indonesia. Dozens of sick people in several countries are being tested. I
WHO said today that studies of the human H5N1 cases in Turkey have produced no clear evidence that the virus has changed its behavior in humans or improved its ability to spread from person to person.
The confirmation of these 2 cases brings the global total of avian flu cases to 171 cases with 93 deaths.
Feb 20, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – The rapidly growing list of countries facing H5N1 avian influenza in birds has swelled to include Egypt, France, and India in the past 4 days, and the virus is suspected in Bosnia as well.
Egyptian officials first reported on Feb 17 that about 20 dead birds had tested positive for the virus, according to an Associated Press report that day. A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization official said the virus had reached Cairo via an infected turkey taken to market there, and outbreaks had been found in backyard chickens and rooftop coops in Giza, across the Nile River from Cairo.
In addition, Egypt’s health minister said the disease had been found in three provinces in the Nile delta and in Fayoum, a farming region southwest of Cairo, according to a Reuters report today.
The report said the sudden arrival and spread of the virus had caused widespread panic among Egyptians. The economic impact could be severe, because the poultry industry in Egypt supports 2.5 million to 3 million people, and Egyptians are heavily dependent on poultry for protein, according to UN officials quoted in the story.
In France, a wild duck found near Lyon tested positive for H5N1 on Feb 18, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report published today. France became the sixth European Union (EU) member to find the virus in birds, after Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Slovenia. (Infected birds have also been found in several non-EU countries in Europe, including Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, and Ukraine.)
India confirmed its first avian outbreak of H5N1 the same day as France, Feb 18. The virus was found in chickens in the western state of Maharashtra, where 50,000 birds died last week, according to an AFP report.
A Feb 19 Bloomberg News report said the virus had affected as many as 52 poultry farms at Nawapur in the northern part of the state, of which Mumbai is the capital. State officials said they had created 60 teams to destroy poultry on 48 farms in 19 villages, the story said.
About 20,000 of an estimated 500,000 birds near Nawapur were destroyed yesterday, according to an AFP report published today. The report said teams of inexperienced agricultural were struggling to slaughter the chickens, beating and strangling some.
One farmer said the government had promised to pay farmers the equivalent of US 80 cents per bird, little more than a third of the cost of raising them, AFP reported.
In Bosnia, tests confirmed an H5 virus in two wild swans, prompting the government to order the slaughter of about 4,400 poultry, according to an AFP report today. The swans were found at a lake near the town of Jajce in the central part of the Balkan country.
Samples from the swans were sent to a laboratory in Weybridge, England, to determine if the virus is H5N1, the story said.
In Hungary, two more wild swans tested positive for an H5 virus, AFP reported today. Samples will be sent to Weybridge for further testing. Hungarian authorities were still waiting for the results of further tests on swans that tested positive for an H5 virus last week, AFP reported.
Malaysia has confirmed its first poultry outbreak of H5N1 since late 2004, according to another AFP report published today. The story said tests were run after 40 chickens on a farm north of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, died last week.
The country’s agriculture minister called the outbreak an “isolated case.” He said authorities had destroyed all the chickens on nearby farms and had taken steps to ensure that no poultry were moved out of the area.
Malaysia had declared itself free of avian flu in January 2005, according to AFP.
WASHINGTON – The Federal Emergency Management Agency should be dissolved and
rebuilt before the upcoming hurricane season, a Sen. Joe Lieberman said
yesterday.
“FEMA has become, to many people in America, and particularly the Gulf
Coast, a joke, a four-letter word,” Lieberman (D-Conn.), a member of the
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on ABC’s “This
Week.”
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned against overhauling FEMA
with hurricane season three months away.
“Nature doesn’t wait for us to do yet another reorganization,” Chertoff
said.”
Reports now indicate that perhaps as many as 1,800 inhabitants may have been killed in this mudslide that essentially halved the size of the mountain.
How did this happen? Torrential rainstorms had been afflicting the area for a while, but that is not apparently the whole story. It appears that this is a classic example of the cascade phenomenon seen with disasters.
In the past, there had been a lot of logging down on the mountain. So? This apparently destroys the root system in the ground that keeps the ground where it’s supposed to be. So when the rains come, there is nothing to anchor the dirt – hence mudslide.
That’s why it’s called the cascade phenomenon: logging — rain— mudslide— death and destruction.
If you want more info about Tamiflu, treatment and prophylaxis, check out Roche’s website: www.tamiflu.com. They also have another website for tracking national and regional flu: www.FluSTAR.com.
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