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Disaster drill tests response to bioterror threat
At 9 a.m. Monday local emergency service crews were called out to the K-Mart parking lot after a report had been received that customers in the "store" there had been exposed to a possible biological threat.
Over the next four hours crews decontaminated the exposed customers and staff and sent a sample of the biological agent to Boise where it was confirmed to be anthrax powder, setting off a statewide alert.
And it was all just a drill, part of a statewide (and even national) disaster exercise designed to test the ability of "first responders" and the state's health districts to react to a biological attack by terrorists.
The drill, the first of a four-day exercise throughout Idaho and including the national Center for Disease Control, was monitored by the Department of Homeland Security.
As evaluators looked on, Mountain Home Fire Chief Phil Gridley set up the incident command post in the Desert Mountain Visitor's Center parking lot and fire crews began putting together decontamination showers. Meanwhile, law enforcement authorities, from the city and county, cordoned off the area and ambulance crews began arriving. The base hazardous materials team was called in.
Fire crews, dressed in white protective suits and wearing gas masks, began taking the more than 30 volunteers who were role-playing as "victims," through the "hot zone" where they were initially washed down, then a "warm zone" for a second shower, and then to the ambulances where they were transported to Elmore Medical Center. There, a further "wash down" was conducted and the "victims" were treated for exposure to anthrax. In addition, some of the victims had other medical problems, including going into labor and a simulated broken leg.
The scenario for the drill began with a report that there had been a terrorist attack in Nampa at the offices of The Daily Planet, a newspaper that distributed throughout the state. The terrorists had sprayed anthrax powder on the newspapers being delivered to citizens all over Idaho. At the "store" in Mountain Home the manager reported seeing white powder in the vicinity of the Daily Planet sales racks, and immediately locked everyone inside the building and called authorities.
All the health districts in the state took part in the exercise in one way or another, in the first major test of their abilities to deal with a biological crisis. But the main focus of the drill was in Elmore County, where most of the activities to test local and state abilities to respond to a major biological threat were being held.
Even the press covering the drill were used in the exercise, testing the ability of law enforcement to control media and onlookers.
Gridley said the de-brief after Monday's part of the drill was concluded pointed out some problems in initially setting up communications and command control, "something that's always a problem in the first few minutes of an incident," but, he said, "that's why we do these drills. To learn how to avoid these problems in real life."
Wednesday the national Center for Disease Control will test its ability to deliver biological immunization supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile, flying a test pallet of supplies into Boise, then acquiring security forces and sending a convoy in a tabletop exercise to Mountain Home where Central District Health will set up a center Thursday at the junior high that will simulate giving medication to 800 people in an hour.
That's the rate CDH estimates it will have to accomplish to innoculate or medicate people during the first 48 hours of an outbreak throughout its four-county area (Elmore, Ada, Boise, and Valley counties) in the event of a real pandemic.
And for the first time the local Emergency Operations Center will be fully activated to deal with the problems associated with a disaster that could leave the area functionally cut off from outside assistance for several days.
The EOC, located at the police station, will have all the top emergency services and elected officials in the county in one location making decisions ranging from addressing the specific disaster, to determining how to make sure food and water supplies are available, where the money to fund disaster relief will come from, what emergency ordinances might be required, and where to evacuate survivors and safely store large numbers of dead bodies.
The county commissioners, who had all planned to take part, will be missing however, as they have been called to testify that day in Boise in the Marla Spence trial, so the drill will add to the problem how decisions would be made with some of the key elected officials missing.
The Southern Baptist Church will take part in the exercise by sending an emergency mobile kitchen from Salt Lake City to test its ability to respond to a disaster, and other local churches, organizations and the Senior Center will take part in the drill as well. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI will have roles in the drill.
Thursday, the EOC will officially stand up. In real life, it probably would have been activated by later Monday, but the exercise has to work around real-world schedules for the elected officials. A Homeland Security trainer will spend the day throwing disasters after disasters at the elected officials, forcing them to make hard decisions about where to focus their priorities.
Also on Thursday, beginning at about 9 a.m., CDH will stand up its innoculation center at the junior high school. After providing the volunteer victims with a briefing about the roles they will play, from about 10:30-11:30 a.m. CDH teams will try to "innoculate" 800 people in one hour. The actual "medication" being handed out will be M&M candies. So far, only about 350 people have signed up to be victims. If necessary, they will go through several times. Volunteers will be accepted who just show up that day.
At the end of Thursday an initial review will be held to identify problems that need to be addressed by all the participants, in order to help them develop better plans for such a disaster in the future, and a full debrief will be held later in July.