Much is made these days in the media of the new world we live in, where too often bad things happen that 5, 10 or 20 years ago we would have never thought about or even known much about. Often these things impact small communities all over the country, such as bus accidents, manufacturing explosions, natural elements of floods, tornadoes and other disasters, that with increased media coverage introduce us to communities and people we would have never known about.
    Often lost in the news is what is being done by local officials to handle such incidents, to save lives, and reduce the risks to others. How did they come to handle the situation and manage it to the best of their abilities, coordinating efforts and managing situations?
    On Friday, April 11 many Howard County agencies, staffs and personnel coordinated to make sure that should some unexpected disaster happen in Howard County, how local officials could be best prepared to handle the situation. Coordinators for the drill included Larry Spalla, Regional Health Services Director of Disaster Preparedness; Sheila Halweg and Connie Koshatka, Community Health Services; and Darrell Knecht, Howard County Emergency Management Coordinator. The staged drill on the pandemic spread of Influenza A also involved the assistance of numerous Regional Health Services employees, Howard County Public Health, Howard County Law Enforcement and Fire Departments, volunteers from Chickasaw, Mitchell and Winneshiek county public health offices, the Crestwood school system, community volunteers, elected officials, business representatives, Red Cross, Board of Health, Region II Emergency Preparedness Planning Staff and State Epidemiologist.
    Early on Friday afternoon a table top discussion was held to outline the beginning steps of this planned disaster. Told to the group of 36 community partners and interested parties was that Howard County Public Health was informed that over 25 percent of the students and staff at Crestwood schools were out sick. When Public Health "checked" more throughout the community they found increased absenteeism at Donaldon, Featherlite and other major employers, and that the Regional Health - Cresco Clinic had seen an influx of Influenza A patients over the previous week. As a result of this, the decision was made by Hospital Incident Commander, David Hartberg, to call a Code Gray disaster within the Regional Health Services Campus, and a decision was made to set up an off-site care facility at Crestwood High School. RHS mobilized all of their staff to not only manage the patients already at the hospital, but to create an alternative site at the High School for distribution of the antiviral medication and to also manage increasing patients with influenza symptoms. As a result of the Code Gray, attempts were made to contact all RHS employees so that a labor pool could be created and moved to areas of need. Law enforcement was used to secure both the hospital and high school in the event news of the situation would cause heightened panic. County officials staged an Emergency Operations Center and Joint Information Center so that they could help coordinate everything from releases of public information, what was occurring, and where people could go for help, as well as to help get resources from state and federal officials. Community members were asked to play the role of patients and to present to the high school with symptoms. E-mail, phone, both land line and cell, as well as two-way radio systems, were tested for their applicability and use. The drill had certain stages pre-planned into it, like the power going out at the high school alternative site, to further complicate and test systems. Observers from Chickasaw, Mitchell and Winneshiek counties and Region II were here to watch our systems and to provide helpful feedback.
    As the event was just last week, what have we learned so far?  Observers said all staffs did well. Over two hours were spent on Friday night alone discussing what had occurred. Comments were about communications systems and how important these were in maintaining multiple sites, and how more systems could be added. Personnel were mentioned time and time again, as it was hard to maintain two sites and provide the services and security people were requiring. People recognized the complexity and difficulty in handling such situations, and yet saw where they had managed systems well and could do this in a difficult time. We learned enough from the drill to show us that we could handle this, but also areas that we will be working on to make our readiness even better.
    We wanted you to know that these efforts were taken to be best prepared.  We'd also like to thank everyone who played a part in this drill to help us test our systems and helped us to prepare for future drills.