Colorado Continues Emergency Response Preparations
August 3, 2006, DENVER – More than 40 employees of
the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment,
along with 40 volunteers, participated in a three-state
emergency preparedness exercise with the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention on July 24-25. This was the largest
such exercise staged by the center and involved the movement
of more than 250 pallets of antibiotics from the federal
government’s Strategic National Stockpile to Colorado.
The exercise was part of ongoing efforts by states and the
federal government to prepare for all-hazards emergencies on
U.S. soil.
In the fictitious exercise, biological and chemical terror
attacks were simulated in Seattle, Denver and Richmond, Va.
The Denver exercise involved a widespread exposure to
anthrax detected by Biowatch air monitors in place in the
Denver metropolitan area. Filters from the monitors are
tested daily for several biological agents harmful to public
health.
“I was very pleased with the department’s participation and
response effort in this exercise,” said Dennis Ellis,
executive director of the Colorado Department of Public
Health and Environment. “It was a huge effort and much more
successful than the statewide exercise held last year. The
state continues to make progress in its preparation for a
public health emergency – and that is the purpose of
exercises like these.”
As part of the drill, the department activated its crisis
management center and involved the Governor’s Expert
Emergency Epidemic Response Committee in coordinating the
state’s response to this hypothetical terrorist attack. The
committee was created under legislation passed in 2000 to
help the state prepare for possible emergency epidemics. The
approximately 20-member committee includes representatives
from state and local health agencies, as well as other state
agencies, including the attorney general’s office.
The event began in the afternoon on July 23 with a staged
terrorist attack in Seattle, then rolled to Richmond and
Denver the following day. The crisis management center at
the Department of Public Health and Environment was staffed
through the night on July 24 to respond operationally to the
event.
During the exercise, five million antibiotic courses –
enough to cover the population of Colorado and anticipated
in-state summer visitors – was flown to Denver and trucked
to a secure warehouse. In the event of a real public health
emergency, the medication would be further divided at the
warehouse for shipment throughout the state. In this
exercise, getting the drugs to the warehouse represented the
end of the exercise.
In a post-exercise debriefing, participants from the
department evaluated the response to identify ways to
improve the state’s emergency response preparedness. Chief
among the improvements identified were additional measures
to ensure better:
* Communication to staff and volunteers;
* Coordination among multiple sites; and
* Sufficient staffing at multiple sites for an
around-the-clock operation.
Observers from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention were on hand throughout the exercise to monitor
and evaluate not just the state’s effectiveness, but also
its own. The exercise did not include involvement from
county, municipal or other local health agencies, but they
could be included in future exercises.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects to
have its evaluation of the exercise completed by this fall.
Costs incurred by the state health department in this
exercise were paid for by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. The approximate total cost was $800,000 for
the three venues.
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