Disaster drill in June needs 800 volunteers

Elmore County emergency services and law enforcement agencies will be the lead groups in a four-county state-level disaster drill to be run June 25-29.

As part of the drill, which will simulate a biohazard attack, Central District Health Department is seeking 800 local residents to sign up and take part in the drill.

It will be the first time that CDHD has taken part in a major state-wide disaster drill, and on June 29 they will attempt to process and "innoculate" (they'll fake it) 800 people in one hour. The national Center for Disease Control also will participate, providing a mock set of pallets containing innoculation serums and other gear simulating elements of the Strategic National Stockpile that would be delivered to this area in the event of a real attack.

Joca Compean Veloz, the Medical Reserve Corps Coordinator of CDHD, noted that with 360,000 people in the four-county region of Elmore, Ada, Boise and Valley County that the district serves, based on anticipated timelines to deal with a pandemic, CDHD would have to innoculate 800 people an hour for about a week in order to obtain the 90-95 percent level of immunization necessary to prevent widespread outbreak of any disease.

A "point of dispersal" clinic will be set up in Mountain Home at a time yet to be specified on June 29, where the 800 volunteers will be processed.

Individuals, clubs, churches and other organizations are being encouraged to sign up now to take part in the excercise. Sign-up forms are available at the Mountain Home News, the county law enforcement building, the courthouse, police station and city hall.

The drill will begin on June 25, when the first evidence of a biohazard is detected. Over the next few days the county will set up its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to direct the activities of law enforcement, ambulance and hospital personnel, and other area emergency services, all of whom will participate in one of the largest disaster drills ever held in the state.

The new EOC is located in the police station and has been the scene of one other previous disaster exercise, as well as being stood up on a "standby" basis during last year's AFAD and air show events.

The EOC is composed of city and county officials, as well as key department heads, and is designed to serve as a central coordinating facility directing all local (and in some cases state and national) services in event of an emergency. The Department of Homeland Security usually assists in the development of the disaster drills and "plays" its normal role -- such as providing FEMA resources -- during the drill.

Planning at the local level for the drill is well underway and last week the EOC members underwent a special training seminar conducted by Gordon Ravenscroft, that outlined how the EOC should operate.

At the end of a morning training session Ravenscroft then led the local leaders, headed by the county commissioners, mayor and city council members, in a discussion of possible scenarios to "get them thinking" about the kinds of decisions they would have to make.

One of the lessons learned during Hurricane Katrina was the need to make sure that the families of emergency responders were taken care of, in order to prevent those responders from leaving their jobs to see to the safety of their families.

As a result, local officials have decided that in the case of a biohazard attack, for example, that the first innoculations should be given to "first responders," such as ambulance, hospital, firemen and law enforcement personnel, but the second priority would be innoculating family members of those personnel before innoculations would begin with the general public.

Simple as that seems, there still was considerable debate among elected officials, who would make the final decisions, as to what would constitute "immediate family."

"If you don't define it clearly, if you don't get the lists set up in advance, then you face the prospect of every second cousin showing up claiming to be immediate family," Ravenscroft pointed out.

In general, elected officials seemed to lean toward designating only those who lived in the same household as the first responder should be placed on the list, but issues were raised concerning other family members, such as grandparents who require special care, or children who live with an ex-spouse, that might not fit that definition.

Ravenscroft also got the officials thinking about how they would deal with a pandemic event, that would swamp national resouces, in which Elmore County would essentially be on its own for one or two weeks. How would the county handle water, food and medical needs? With local food supplies in stores probably good for only a few days, would they have the legal right to ration food sold commercially? How would they handle potential food riots (what level of force should be used?).

What, Ravenscroft asked, would they do if someone with a gun took several hostages demanding priority in critically short innoculation serum?

And what would happen, he asked, throwing out more and more possible scenarios for them to think about, if an angry, armed mob showed up at the EOC demanding vaccines or food.

And on it went, most of the day, with Ravenscroft posing more and more problems that would require political decisions that would have to be addressed in a crisis, in addition to the technical ones.

"The purpose," he said, "of an exercise like this is to get them thinking ahead of time. I think that happened today." By the June drill, he said, they should be able to decide much more quickly, having had a chance to see the kinds of hard decisions they would have to make.