LEPC reviews disaster drill; begins to plan to handle bird flu issues if needed in the future

Thursday, November 17, 2005

By Ralph Pokorny

Nevada Daily Mail

Almost every network television newscast has a story on the spread of avian flu around the world. However, there are no verified cases of avian flu in the United States, not even in birds, Lt. Pat McCarty told members of the Vernon County Local Emergency Planning Committee during Wednesday's regular monthly meeting. McCarty, who is also the school resource officer for the Nevada R-5 School District, said that all the coverage of avian flu has had an impact on Nevada students. "One of our nurses at Truman was getting ready to teach a class and she had to spend most of her time answering students questions about avian flu rather than teaching her class," he said.

If there is some type of epidemic the city is working on plans to deal with it. McCarty said the city is looking at ways to control the spread of disease including quarantines and mass inoculations.

"We'll get this done in the city first and then move to the county," he said.

Emergency management team members are working to identify a couple of locations in Vernon County in case there is a problem, he said, adding that the rural schools might be used as mass inoculation sites. These plans would also work for something like anthrax, he said.

Dennis Kimrey, Vernon County emergency manager, said that the annual disaster drill went well, but communications between units was a problem, the same as every year.

"We shouldn't have this problem, and I would like to see a group set up to work on solving it," he said.

"That is the reason we have these drills -- to find out what does not work," he said.

Kimrey said that he had attended an exercise design class recently and learned that Vernon County will have to make changes in the way their annual drills are structured. He said that in the future the drills must have a terrorism-related theme or the county will lose federal funds for emergency preparedness and that could include money for the hazardous materials team located here.

"This is going to affect a lot of people around the state as to how they do exercises," he said.

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