Trillium Response - Part 2

Trillium Response

One of Emergency Management & Training's specialties is planning, coordinating and implementing mock disasters, often involving several hundred participants.

EMT was one of the major behind the scenes players for Trillium Response, an exercise lead by Emergency Management Ontario and the Department of National Defence. It involved dozens of municipal, provincial and federal agencies, NGOs and otehr organizations.

EMT coordinated the EMAT (Emergency Medical Assistance Team) portion of the exercise working with numerous agencies to coordinate the deployment, recruiting 16 physicians to works as Patient Information Providers and more than 200 volunteers to play the role of patients over the 2 day exercise. EMT created the scenarios to challenge the EMAT team leaders and the patient scenarios.

Dr. Martin Cann attended on behalf of EMT to photograph Trillium Response. We have had numerous requests to post photos so the next few posts will be a small sampling of the hundreds of photos taken during the exercise.

Guide to Disaster Planning for Animals

The American Veterinary Medical Association has released their Emergency Preparedness and Response Guide. This comprehensive 423 page document covers a full range of topics from being prepared to deal with pets to livestock to zoo animals.

While the document is focused on the USA there is valuable planning material applicable to both Veterinaries and emergency planners world wide.

The manual includes everything from daily water and feed requirements for farm animals to emergency treatments for health issues, behavioural concerns with animals under stress, and lessons learned from various disasters.

The document is available online at:

http://www.avma.org/disaster/emerg_prep_resp_guide.pdf

Owners Charged In Retirement Home Fire

Following an investigation by the Ontario Fire Marshal’s office of a fatal fire (January 19, 2009), the Orillia Fire Department has laid 7 charges against the owners of the Muskoka Heights Retirement residence.

These charges include:

· Failure to ensure exterior passageway or fire escape in occupied building be maintained;

· Failure to ensure supervisory staff be instructed in the fire emergency procedures as described in the fire safety plan before given any responsibility for fire safety;

· Failure to implement the fire safety plan provisions for conducting the required monthly tests of the building’s fire alarm system;

· Failure to prominently post and maintain on each floor area at least one copy of the fire emergency procedures;

· Failure to implement the fire safety plan provisions for conducting fire drills for supervisory staff;

· Failure to conduct annual maintenance and testing of portable extinguishers;

· Failure to ensure original or a copy of records be retained at the building premises;

If convicted, the owners can be fined up to $50,000 and sentenced to 1 year in jail on each of the charges.

Despite heroic rescue attempts by firefighters, two residents perished during the fire and two others later succumbed from their injuries at hospital.

These charges underscore the importance of due diligence in ensuring a proper emergency plan, training, and documentation.

The press release from the Fire Marshal’s office can be found at:

http://www.ofm.gov.on.ca/english/Publications/Press/2009/July-20-09.asp

Bus Roll Over Injures Children - Brings Parents to the Scene

It was a parent's worst nightmare. Some, while waiting at parking lot to meet their children who were returning from a summer camp, received word that the school bus they were travelling in had rolled over on the highway. Others heard it on the car radio, some via text messages and cell phone calls.

What came next has the potential to be a nightmare for emergency responders and planners... concerned parents rushing directly to the scene.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2009/07/11/10102906-sun.html

If you can expect it, you better plan for it. Whether you are planning for incidents involving schools, daycares, camps, school buses, amusement parks, zoos, or any location where children gather, EM planners need to consider anxious and frightened parents showing up demanding to be with their children, wanting to know immediately where they are and how they are.

Incident Managers need to assign personnel to set up a staging location for the parents, be prepared to provide accurate information quickly, and have a plan to bring parent and child together as soon as possible. Plan for the media to target worried and anxious parents.

While the July 11th incident had a good ending with all of the children being released from hospital by the 12th, the risk of a more serious incident is very real.

If you don't have a plan to deal with such incidents, there is another job for this week's task list.

H1N1 - interesting impacts

Over the past week I have attended a couple of emergency planning meetings where the H1N1 was on the agenda. The consensus continues to be that the H1N1 is no more dangerous that the annual influenza outbreaks that occur each year. Most cases are mild and do not require hospitalization or medical care. Although there have been fatalities due to the H1N1 the numbers are not any higher than the annual influenza.

The public perception of H1N1, on occasion, is that of fear (driven by the media???) resulting in some interesting impacts. Attached is a link to a news story in Florida where a bus transporting children home from a trip to Orland made an "emergency" stop at a hospital with fears the children had H1N1.

http://www.wftv.com/news/20016497/detail.html

Now that summer camps are in full swing and other activities where large groups of people gather, similar incidents are always possible.

Education efforts for camp staff, other summer activity staff, parents, and the media are important to ensure an appropriate response to any illness outbreak and reduce the risk 50 people showing up at the local ER on a bus.

World Conference on Disaster Management

Emergency Management & Training is once again proud to have been a sponsor of the World Conference on Disaster Management.

We had opportunity to meet emergency management specialists from across Canada and the United States as well as Japan, South Africa, Uganda, Iran, Australia, Barbados and Denmark.

In addition to informative sessions, networking and checking out new technologies are always learning opportunities. And of course, meeting up with friends and cohorts from the past make the conference fun. Thank you to all of our clients and friends who stopped by to say Hi.

Always Ready Kids (ARK)

Earlier this week I had the privileged of meeting a young man (16 years old) who started a non-profit organization 5 years ago to educate youth on emergency preparedness. Yes, that means Konstantine Buhler was 11 years old when he founded Always Ready Kids.

This amazing young man spoke articulately with a group of emergency preparedness professionals explaining how the organization was established and run by "kids" to assisted "kids" and their families prepare for disasters. It was only then we found out that he was only 16, most of us assuming that he was a few years older than that by his professional presentation.

Always Ready Kids (ARK) has reached out to tens of thousands of young people across the United States with programs that are totally funded by corporate donations and now ARK is prepared to expand into other countries.

Community emergency preparedness officials should take a look at this program, the work completed and the methods they are using to educate young people - http://www.alwaysreadykids.org/ . An amazing young man with an amazing organization. Check it out.

The photo captures Konstantine and his father at the 2009 World Conference on Disaster Management.

The Value of Libraries

I am always learning from my clients. Our company chooses to deal with those organizations who are the progressive leaders in their fields, so we get to deal with some amazing people.

The Brampton Library is one of those organizations which sets the bar for others to reach towards. They have been working on a well developed pandemic plan along with other emergency procedures.

Today we had the opportunity to conduct a pandemic tabletop exercise for the library management team including the CEO Adele Kostiak. As we were debriefing the exercise, Ms. Kostiak stated that one of the opportunities for the library to participate in major community incidents is to "Provide servicing to the emergency process".

Library staff are experts at research, filtering accurate information from a world full of data, and communicating with the community. They already have well established communication processes and are a trusted source of information for the average person.

Libraries are an untapped resource for emergency planners with staff who are eager to assist.

Emergency planning departments usually have few staff, many of whom are double (or triple) hatters, with limited budgets, and can always use assistance with research and stakeholder communications. Libraries are a hidden resource.

The Brampton Library logo is underscored with the words "Education, Information, Inspiration". What a find for the Emergency Planner who takes advantage of their services.

H1N1 Now a Pandemic

Today the World Health Organization declared that H1N1 an official pandemic. H1N1 spreads easily between people and there have now been close to 30,000 cases in 74 countries, with 141 deaths related to the influenza strain.

Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization states "No previous pandemic has been detected so early or watched so closely, in real-time, right at the very beginning. The world can now reap the benefits of investments, over the last five years, in pandemic preparedness."

Leona Aglukkaq, Health Minister (Canada), responded to the WHO's upgraded rating of H1N1 reassuring Canadians "Today's WHO declaration is primarily a technical decision that is based on how the virus has spread, and does not reflect how severe it is."

Most cases of H1N1 are very mild however we should never let our guard down. Traditional pandemic planning has been for the avian influenza and then SARS struck suddenly in 2003 with a very serious illness, now it is H1N1 originating in swine. H1N1 has demonstrated how small of a world we live in. From a relatively small outbreak in Mexico the disease has now spread around the world in a matter of a few short months.

The key lesson is that all organizations need to continue to prepare their pandemic and business continuity planning, as the next outbreak could originate anywhere, any time, and have more significant health consequences.

Lets also be reminded that the annual flu outbreak has significant consequences. In Canada more than 20,000 people are sent to the hospital with influenza, with 4,000 to 8,000 deaths each year being attributed to the flu.

WHO website: http://www.who.int/en/
Fight Flu: http://www.fightflu.ca/index-eng.html
US Center for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/qa.htm

Seminar for Long Term Care / Retirement Homes

Successful Seminar for Long Term Care / Retirement Homes

In a sell out, 36 attendees from travelled from as far as Windsor and Espanola to attend the Emergency Management for Long Term Care and Retirement Homes Seminar.

Information was provided on the basics of an Incident Management System, doing a Hazard Identification and Risk Analysis, developing a Crisis Communications policy, prevention and mitigation and many other topics.

We would like to thank special guests Wieslawa Stepkowska, Antonio Ferreira, and Lyle Quan for their insightful presentations and sharing of real life experiences.