Three-day exercise tests emergency preparedness

If this had been an actual emergency, much more than M&Ms would have been at stake.

That point was not lost on many of the 350 volunteers who showed up Thursday to help the Panhandle Health District participate in what was billed as a successful statewide test of emergency preparedness.

“When I was riding over on the bus, I thought, ‘This could be real,’ ” said Sandy Bertuccelli, a Red Cross volunteer who has staffed several actual emergencies, including Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans last summer.

Bertuccelli praised the three-day exercise, which aimed to evaluate whether staff at the state’s seven health districts, including North Idaho’s, could smoothly distribute medication – in this case, plain and peanut M&Ms – to masses of people.

“It’s just seeing how people all work together,” said Bertuccelli, a former police officer. “Anytime you can have experience, it’s a good thing.”

The exercise began on Tuesday, when staff members learned about the trouble they would face, said Susan Cuff, spokeswoman for the health district.

Even Cuff agreed the scenario was a little far-fetched: Terrorists seized the distribution sites of local newspapers and tainted all the printed copies with anthrax. The poisoned papers were then delivered throughout the five-county district by news carriers and in news boxes, raising the prospect of mass illness.

“Anthrax is something that would affect everyone, that we would need to get an antidote to,” Cuff said.

With that in mind, health and safety agencies from across North Idaho converged at the health district office to create a plan. One bright spot was that the drill allowed a test of the emergency command center at the new center.

On Thursday, hundreds of volunteers were bused from the Kootenai County Fairgrounds to Coeur d’Alene High School, where a dispensing center was arranged.

They moved smoothly through several processing points, filling out forms, addressing health concerns and, finally, receiving antibiotic treatment. In this case, plain M&Ms substituted for doxycycline, while the peanut variety stood in for Cipro.

Cuff said the exercise revealed only minor problems in planning and execution, including the need for better coordination of supplies and consistent media messages.

“There wasn’t anything that was just horrible,” she said.

A report about the exercise, which cost $20,000 to conduct, should be completed soon, Cuff said.