Being prepared is different for everyone. For Kimberly McLeod, it’s having lots of bottled water and batteries. For Steve Sims, it’s thinking about how to buy a gas mask and a suit like those the U. S. soldiers are wearing in case of a chemical attack.
As the country remains at Code Orange, there is more talk about preparedness than many people have ever heard in their lives and the City of Alexandria is trying to give people as much information as they can.
McLeod has seen all of the emergency preparedness information. “My mother got a smallpox vaccination and she tells me stories about the Cuban missile crisis,” she said. “I don’t know if I would get the vaccine or not and I’m not sure I would give it to my kids. I’m not really changing my life much. I guess I am a bit more vigilant about things and I have bought some bottled water and I always make sure that I now where flashlights and batteries are in the house. I have plenty of food in the house, too. I don’t know that I am doing anything that I shouldn’t have already done to prepare for a big snowstorm or a tornado or something. I am a little scared about a terrorist attack—anyone who lived through Sept. 11 is—but, really, I’m just going about my business and making sure that I get my kids to soccer and baseball practice.”
Sims, on the other hand, isn’t taking any chances. “We live so close to the Pentagon that I think we should have gas masks, maybe,” he said. “I have supplies in my home, at work and in my car and I have plans for where I would go if we had to evacuate the area. Some people think I’m crazy, but I feel better.”
Sgt. Joe Watson of the Alexandria Police Department and Captain John North of the Alexandria Fire Department have developed a lesson plan for citizens and for city employees who might need to know more.
“Our presentations can last from 40 minutes to four hours, depending on the audience,” Watson said. “For civic groups, we usually keep our presentations to the 40-minute end of that range and leave plenty of time for questions. The goal is for everyone to leave having gotten as many of their questions answered as possible.”
WATSON HAS extensive training in preparing for, and dealing with all types of emergencies. He was a Marine and has been a police officer for more than 20 years. He is assigned to the Special Operations Division of the Police Department and is a field instructor for Louisiana State University on emergency preparedness.
“We don’t try to give people more information than they need or want,” Watson said. “Mainly, we talk to them about staying alert and looking for things that may seem suspicious. I need citizens to be my eyes and ears and I encourage them to call if they believe that they have seen something suspicious, like a suspicious package, for example. I know that this may cause me to have to respond to more calls, but that’s alright. I would prefer that they help the police and other public safety officials than that they not call us when there is a real emergency.”
Watson’s primary message is stay uphill, upwind and upstream of courses of contamination. “We tell people to get away from what they think is the source of the emergency and let a professional handle the matter,” he said.
Watson and North made a recent presentation to public school employees. “They had a lot of questions and we tried to answer them all as best we could,” Watson said. “The school system has an over-all emergency plan and we have asked each school facility to develop its own plan that will become part of that over-all plan. Cpt. North and I will review these plans and work with the staff as much as they want us to,” he said.
THE SCHOOL SYSTEM has taken some precautions. There is water and food in each school for up to three days of Shelter In Place. Classrooms now have bins of supplies, including flashlights, batteries, wipes for hands and duct tape.
Students have practiced emergency drills and everyone knows where he needs to go in case of an emergency. Plans are continuing to be developed.
What about the threat of smallpox or some other disease being released by terrorists? Dr. Charles Konigsberg of the Alexandria Health Department works closely with other regional health department directors to disseminate material to the public.
According to Konigsberg, “There is a balance that is sometimes hard to find. We want to give the public information but we do not want to frighten them. Most public health officials feel that the threat of smallpox being released is mostly theoretical. However, that threat has brought the health system together in a way that nothing has done for many years,” he said.
Most public health professionals, Konigsberg included, felt that America’s public health system was in disarray prior to Sept. 11. “Now, just here in Northern Virginia, we have 13 epidemiologists. Before Sept. 11, we didn’t even have one. That is a good thing,” he said.
Also, there is much broader cooperation with hospitals and other components of the healthcare system. “We have come light years in our collaboration with the Inova system,” Konigsberg said. “That is also a very good thing.”
KONIGSBERG ADDS A cautionary note, however. “These are good things but if we continue to dedicate this many resources to responding to the threat of infectious diseases such as smallpox and ignore the other public health threats, we will have more problems,” he said.
What are the real public health threats in this time of Code Orange? “The same ones that we knew about before Sept. 11,” Konigsberg said. “Cigarettes still kill 400,000 people a year. Fifty thousand people die in car accidents and a million are injured as a result of car accidents each year. We still have way too many cases of HIV in this country. Teen pregnancy is still a problem. We cannot ignore these real public health threats.”
And there is SARS, the new respiratory disease that is infecting people throughout the world. “SARS is not the result of a terrorist act,” Konigsberg said. “We are beginning to vaccinate healthcare workers and are preparing a public education campaign for police officers and other public safety employees on the vaccine. There are some disturbing side effects so we are not calling for volunteers from the public safety sector at this point.
“Some members of my staff have been vaccinated and everyone is doing fine. I was vaccinated as a child and again two weeks ago and I am doing fine. However, don’t expect to see an announcement that members of the public can come down to the Alexandria Health Department next week or next month, even, and get a smallpox vaccine. I just don’t see that happening,” he said.
LUCY CALDWELL IS the public information officer for the Virginia Department of Health’s regional task force on Bioterrorism. According to her, there is a lot of information on their web site that should answer many questions that members of the public have.
"We speak to many different types of groups if they request that we come. All of the regional health department directors are working closely with each other and with the members of the task force,” said Caldwell.
Konigsberg and members of his staff have spoken to school nurses and other healthcare providers. “We spoke to the school nurses just after September 11, and are certainly available if they have any questions,” he said.
Both Konigsberg and Watson are involved in making sure that the city is prepared for any emergency. “We have developed a number of plans for many different types of emergencies,” said Barbara Gordon, the city’s public information officer. “The city has an overall plan and then each facility has a plan and then each department within that facility has a plan. All of the plans have four components—prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.”
* Prevention—
“We have taken new security measures and implemented other plans to make the city and city facilities safer,” Gordon said.
* Preparedness—
“Each agency has developed a plan in communication with public safety officials and these plans have been reviewed and tested,” Gordon said. “Before September 11, we had fire drills. Now we have many different types of drills.”
* Response—
“We have the emergency operations center, of course, and we have several different ways of communicating with personnel. We have lists of essential and emergency employees and these people as well as most department directors and even division chiefs have pagers that we will use in case of an emergency so that we can contact them no matter when the emergency happens,” Gordon said.
* Recovery—
"Recovery is about dealing with the aftermath of the emergency," Gordon said. "We have a number of contingency plans in place depending on what happens. For example, cleaning up affter the snowstorm required one set of recovery plans while cleaning up from flooding and sewer problems required another. We believe that we have done the best we can to think through recovery efforts from an array of possibilities."
Also, there are plans for communicating information to the public.” We have the Regional Incident Communication and Cooperation System,” she said. “This is managed by the Metropolitan Council of Governments and allows us to communicate with other jurisdictions in case of a regional emergency. We used it very successfully during the sniper incidents, for example. COG has refined this system, too. Now, there are smaller regional systems within the larger system. For instance, if an emergency only effects Northern Virginia, we can contact only jurisdictions in Northern Virginia.”
THE CITY ALSO HAS AN emergency telephone system. “If there is a situation and we need the public to call for information, we have a phone number for that and it can be staffed 24 hours a day and can roll over to as many lines as we need,” Gordon said.
For those who want more information about emergency preparedness, the city web site contains the regional emergency preparedness brochure. That address is www.ci.alexandria.va.us. The Virginia Department of Health’s web site also contains information on public health issues. That address is www.VDH.va.state www.vdh.va.state. The city’s telephone number that can be used to obtain information on emergency preparedness is 703-838-4800. Citizen groups wishing to contact Sgt. Watson or Cpt. North for a presentation should call 703-519-5968.