It seems the news these days often carries stories about viral, bacterial and related disease outbreaks.  We all hear and worry about the “usual suspects” such as Norwalk Virus on cruise ships (“cruise ship virus”) or whether we can catch TB, flu or other diseases on an airplane (yes).  Even hospitals are not safe from these threats.  Johns Hopkins Hospital had a Norwalk outbreak in 2004, described as “one of at least 24” in Maryland in just the first half of that year.  That incident lasted three months, sent 13 employees to the emergency room or the hospital, and cost JHH over $650,000.  Across the country hospitalized patients are contracting clostridium difficile (c. diff), with up to 438 patients dying every day.

Video (with audio) from an EPA cleanup site in east Texas.  Cans of crystallized ether had to be exploded on-site.  This material is shock-sensitive, has to be handled like an unstable explosive and is too dangerous to move anywhere else.  The solution here was a “blow-in-place” scenario.  Our ATF bomb tech put the cans in shallow holes, rigged them with a small donor charge and we remote-detonated them.

Refer to the EPA web site at http://www.epaosc.org/site_profile.asp?site_id=06RZ for detailed information.

This is our Pandemic Influenza Control Plan.  Please feel free to use it at your facility, or to distribute it to others.

IESO, LLC Pandemic Influenza Control Plan

Keep up with the latest official information at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) site, and don’t hesitate to contact us for support in developing and implementing a plan at your facility.

Our Senior Risk Manager, Dr. Scott Harris, was the Region 6 EPA lead for BioWatch, a national sentry program for early detection of biological WMD events. He served on national workgroups and developed BMPs and Agency capabilities for surveillance, first response, hotzone sampling and decontamination procedures, and authored response plans for numerous major cities and international airports.  Scott led and participated in biological WMD exercises and responses, and provided related training to state and federal agencies.