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Could flu pandemic happen again?Perhaps
March 4, 2008
Local
By Tom Rivers
trivers@batavianews.com
For several weeks the community has been reading a fictional account
of the 1918 influenza outbreak in Thomas Mullen's novel The Last Town
on Earth.
Ninety years later, local health and emergency management officials
say such a nightmarish pandemic is not so farfetched today.
The flu is constantly mutating, health officials said. They note that
this year's flu shot missed the mark, allowing widespread flu, although
a far cry from the 1918 flu described in The Last Town on Earth, the
featured book in this year "A Tale for Three Counties" community
reading project.
Public health and emergency management officials are constantly on watch
for virus outbreaks that strike locally, regionally or throughout the
country. They are vigilant about other disasters that can emerge unannounced
at any time, whether a contagious disease that ravages livestock or
a collision of two jetliners, high in the sky, which would rain debris
on the communities below.
"I tell people I'm probably the most paranoid person in Orleans
County because I'm thinking about all of this stuff and trying to come
up with a plan," said Paul Wagner, Orleans County emergency management
director.
The county has a "mass fatality plan" should a virus decimate
the population. In that case there won't be funerals or public gatherings
until the virus had passed. If foot-and-mouth disease hit local livestock,
Wagner said thousands of animals would be quarantined or slaughtered
and incinerated.
"As a people in America we're pretty complacent about these things,"
Wagner said. "But we shouldn't be because any one of them could
come up and bite us."
Counties have plans in place for mass vaccinations in case of an outbreak.
Erie County put its public health plan to the test in mid-February when
10,153 people were given vaccinations in a hepatitis A scare. Local
county health employees assisted Erie County in administering the doses
and organizing the mass vaccinations.
"It's a real threat that a lot of people don't think about,"
Paul Pettit, the Orleans County Health Department director, said about
the flu and other pandemics. "We write these plans but we don't
put them into practice unless there is an event."
Wagner has led several exercises with local emergency responders and
health officials, simulating a response to a massive lethal outbreak.
While he worries about a widespread outbreak, he spends more time planning
for Mother Nature's potential disasters.
"It's a daunting task and we worry about it," he said about
disease outbreaks. "But we worry more about wind storms, ice storms
and snow storms. They happen more and can have more far-ranging consequences."
Wyoming County officials have also conducted several such drills over
the years, including a mass casualty drill last spring, which simulated
a chemical truck accident at Letchworth Central School.
Officials have also worked in the past with the Warsaw Junior Tigers
Football team to offer It's a Disaster ... and What are YOU Gonna Do
About It?, an advice book for everything from snowstorms to terrorism.
Timothy Yaeger, Genesee County director of Emergency Services, said
he works closely with the Health Department and staff is routinely going
to training seminars, workshops and conferences, including the latest
one in Atlanta.
"Primarily it is a plan for dealing with a pandemic," he said.
"We have a draft plan in place and we're just massaging it a bit
until it's final."
Neither Pettit nor Wagner has read The Last Town on Earth, but Wagner
said he recently read about the Influenza of 1918 in Scientific American.
He didn't sleep much after that for a few days.
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Daily News Staff Writers Matt Surtel and Scott DeSmit contributed to
this report
Courtesy of Batavia Newspapers Corporation