ByMelissaHealy
LosAngeles Times
For all the political chatter abouthurricaneresponse and the human toll of such disasters, one lesson of past monster storms is clear and getting ever more urgent as they get more frequent: Hurricanes claim lives and erode health before, during and after the water, wind and rain hit.
To reduce the short-term and long-termhealth toll of these storms, emergency planners need to anticipate how the threats to life and healthunfold, and get ahead of them.
They may even use such disasters as opportunities to boost communities’ health in a storm’s wake.
On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set up a roughly 50-personEmergencyOperations Center at its headquarters in Atlanta. Fromit, experts have traced the arc of dangers to affffffffffffected populations. Working through medical communities and with state and federal disaster relief agencies, the CDC says it is executing an unfolding campaigntoprevent injuries, detect and respond to the emergence of disease, andfoster physical andmental health before, during and after Hurricane Florence.
“There are definitely behavioralpatternswerecognize,” said Donna Knutson, the CDC’s incident manager for the Hurricane Florence response. People evacuate without all their prescriptiondrugs, she said. They cut themselves trudging unprotected through flfloodwaters tainted by industrial and household pollutants. They take their chances on dicey stored food, inviting gastrointestinal misery, and use generators too close to their homes, risking asphyxiation. They stay too long in homes contaminated bymold and, in their urgency to regain their senseofnormality, may overlook a familymember’s gnawing despair.
These threats to life and health are preventable, said Knutson. But it takes more than drills and exercises to prepare fifirst responders and medicalcommunities to prevent them. Where frequent fifirst- handexperiencemaybe missing, the CDC can provide expertise in what to expect, she said.
In the run- up to Hurricane Florence’s arrival inthe Carolinas, the CDC issued injury- preventionmessages, warning people in flflooded areas not to take refuge in their attics, touch downed power lines or drive into moving water — one of the most frequent causes of drowning.
Its public health experts have calculated the safe ratio of shelter seekers to bathroomfacilities in public buildings, and briefed hospitals and fifirst responders on the types of injuries they’re likely to see, and when.
They’ve lined up booster shots against tetanus for evacueeswithopenwounds, and laid in pneumonia inoculations to offffffffffffer at shelters. Knutson said that the CDC is dispatching flflu vaccine to many shelters to capitalize on these facilities’ captive populations.
And, as waters subside, evacuees returning tohomes that have stood in water for more than 48 hourswill get detailed instructions in how to clear and clean to prevent mold, which can cause and exacerbate respiratory and allergic reactions. The CDC is alsoreadying environmental health offifficers to assess mold, drinkingwater threats and the escape of hazardous materials, aswell as epidemiologists to detect exploding populations of rodents and mosquitoes and outbreaks of the diseases they carry.
Knutson said the CDCwill be vigilant for outbreaks of plague, transmittedwhenrat populations surge and people get bitten by rodent flfleas carrying the Yersinia pestis bacterium.