# 1597
Thirty-two years ago, as a paramedic and a member of the civil defense, I was part of our county's emergency planning board. At my first sit down session, I was given a copy of our county's Emergency Operations Manual. It made for interesting reading.
On the opening page, it gave the following order: That if the phone system was down, it gave a list of home telephone numbers of county officials that should be immediately notified.
Obviously, this plan needed a little work.
That was then, this is now. And the crises we prepare for today are considerably larger in scope than the hurricanes and plane crashes we were preparing for back in 1976.
The Federal government, and nearly every state, has prepared an extensive pandemic plan.
These plans are inconsistent and largely untested, with some states planning for a 1918-style pandemic, and others preparing for a milder 1957 event. In almost all of them that I've read, there are `gaps', areas where it isn't clear how things will be done, or who will do them.
While the Feds and the states have all run drills, there are many questions unanswered about how their plans will fare during a crisis.
Today we learn that the Inspector General's office is questioning the USDA's ability to cope with an outbreak of bird flu here in the United States.
To be clear, we're not talking human infections here, we're talking poultry.
This from the AP.
USDA Bird Flu Plan Needs Test
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Agriculture Department cannot ensure it will respond effectively to a bird flu outbreak because it has not tested many of the policies put in place as part of a national preparedness plan, an inspector general's report said Friday.
The USDA would be responsible for preventing or minimizing a bird flu outbreak among domestic animals. An outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza could create havoc in the egg and poultry market, now valued at about $27 billion.
The department's inspector general said it has made "significant progress" in preparing for a potential outbreak. For example, it developed regulations that allow producers to be compensated for losses incurred from low-pathogenic avian influenza infecting their flocks. Culling infected birds can reduce the potential of the virus mutating into a more pathogenic form.
But the report said the USDA had no plans to test several important strategies that it has developed. For example, one agency did not update its Web site to notify producers and other interested parties within 24 hours of a confirmed avian influenza outbreak, "highlighting the potential gap between reported accomplishments and actual achievements."
The virus remains hard for people to catch, but experts worry it could mutate into a form that passes easily among people, igniting a flu pandemic. Most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds. The H5N1 variant of avian flu has killed at least 224 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
The federal government's plan to prepare the country for avian influenza includes more than 300 tasks for various federal departments. The plan gave the USDA responsibility for about one-third of those tasks.
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