Preparedness in the Downeast district

The Downeast District continues to build strong relationships with our emergency preparedness partners through active participation in tabletop exercises.

Bar Harbor Airport held a full-scale airplane in the water scenario with the district liaison working in the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) for the event.

Castine conducted a table top exercise around a hurricane-type event that caused road closures to the peninsula and subsequent damage and contamination to the local drinking water infrastructure. Maine CDC staff provided consultation on boil order procedures and drinking water protocols for home owners and food establishments.

Although not as high a public health concern, both Gouldsboro and Bucksport reviewed their emergency operations plans around dammed waterways and then conducted table top exercises around high precipitation events, causing breaching and damage to the dams and potential flooding impacts on residences, roads, and infrastructure.

All in all, these were great opportunities for regional public health and public safety working with local communities to better prepare for potential realistic emergencies. 

Disasters don’t plan ahead. You can.

September is National Preparedness Month. Maine CDC’s Public Health Emergency and Response (PHEP) team provides oversight and coordination of all public health and medical response and recovery resources that are required to reduce and/or prevent loss of life from an infectious disease outbreak, a natural disaster, or an act of terrorism. This is accomplished by activating and staffing the Public Health Emergency Operations Center, which is the central nervous system for all response and recovery activities being conducted by public health and healthcare responders.

In between public health emergencies, the PHEP program is busy preparing for the next emergency by updating emergency operations plans based on lessons learned, facilitating the identification and prioritization of public health threats, facilitating incident management training, developing and facilitating response exercises among with partners statewide, managing response equipment and supply caches, rotating and distributing medical countermeasures, testing emergency communications equipment, and recruiting medical volunteers.

In the past year, the Maine Responds coordinator has recruited 564 medical volunteers, bringing our total number of deployable volunteers to more than 900 individuals. PHEP has developed six new Medical Reserve Corps Units; there is now one in each of the eight public health districts. The Maine Health Alert Network has the highest enrollment numbers (n=15,000) since implementing the HAN system in 2007. PHEP also increased operational ability to safely transport highly infectious disease patients to specialized healthcare facilities to receive appropriate and specialized care. 

National Preparedness Month

September 2014 marks the eleventh annual National Preparedness Month, which is being supported by more than 3,000 public and private organizations all across the country. One goal of Maine CDC's Public Health Emergency Preparedness Program is to help educate individuals about how to prepare for emergencies, including natural disasters, mass casualties, biological and chemical threats, radiation emergencies, and terrorist attacks. Would you be prepared if there was an emergency today?

Follow these four steps to join Maine CDC's emergency preparedness efforts:

• Get a Kit
• Make a Plan
• Be Informed
• Get Involved

During September, Maine CDC is focusing our emergency preparedness communication efforts on: 

• Home and family preparedness, including older Americans with disabilities and special needs 
• Back-to-school Ready Kids
• Learning how to shelter in place during an emergency

The Emergency Preparedness and Response offers additional information and resources under topics such as hurricane preparedness, extreme heat, and bioterrorism.  

Vigilant Guard

Maine CDC staff recently participated in a five-day full-scale disaster response exercise. The Vigilant Guard exercise began with a briefing to the Initial Response Team on Monday, Nov. 5, and concluded on Friday, Nov. 8.

Vigilant Guard is a national-level exercise conducted four times a year by the National Guard Bureau and the United States Northern Command in conjunction with civilian first responders and local governments around the United States. This year, Maine was chosen to participate in Vigilant Guard. The response to participate from Maine's emergency preparedness and health care communities was impressive. Maine CDC participated along with multitude of partners including the Maine Emergency Management Agency, local EMA, Regional Resource Centers, physicians and hospitals, EMS, Civil Air Patrol, National Guard, hospitals, police, and fire departments. Federal partners from FEMA and US CDC as well as partners from other states and Canada participated as well.

Maine CDC's Public Health Emergency Preparedness team has been planning this exercise with our health care partners for well over a year to test our response capabilities and identify any gaps in those capabilities. The exercise scenario was developed in collaboration with Maine CDC's Infectious Disease and Medical Epidemiology programs in order to develop a plausible and realistic scenario that would push our response capabilities to the breaking point.

The exercise scenario involved an intentional release of anthrax, which allowed us to test our request process with US CDC regarding receiving assets from the Strategic National Stockpile. We also tested the delivery, receipt, and distribution of medical countermeasures to closed and open Points of Dispensing (PODs) statewide. In addition to responding to the anthrax scenario, the Public Health Emergency Operations Center (PHEOC) also provided support to health care facilities for numerous simulated mass casualties, hazardous materials incidents, major blizzards, freezing temperatures, and significant power outages statewide.

The Public Health Emergency Preparedness staff would like to thank everyone who helped us plan for this exercise as well as those staff members who placed their regular work duties on hold in order to staff the PHEOC during the exercise. We could not have done it without your help!