Alameda County Disaster Preparedness Health Coalition January 26, 2016 9:00am 12:00pm Location : Emergency Medical Services Attendees In-Person: Cynthia Frankel, Zerlyn Ladua, Rick Luna, Donata Nilsen, Erica Pan, Ron Seitz, Kelly Coleman, Shaun Vincent, Roger Marsden, Justin Koenig, Glen Goddard, Suzanne Ridel, Preston Lam, Beverly Chu, Dawn Lulua-Claxton, Sandra Williams, Travis Kusman, Conference Line: Karen Tait Topic Discussion Action Item(s) Welcome and Intros People introduced themselves. Valley Fire Response Karen Tait: 3 rd worst wild fire in history. Emergency mode began end of July. Clearlake hospital was almost evacuated. Speed of fire was fast 70,000 acres burned in about 14 hours. Healthcare workers were victims also. Hospice closed bereavement for 2 weeks because of employees impacted. Activities: situation reports, resource management, volunteer management, medical health worker management, distributed HEPA regulators, N95 masks, hygiene kits, medical cots, mosquito repellent since people were camping out. Coordinated with air quality management. Would have liked 1 person who solely did volunteer management. Made and renewed Proclamation Health Emergency that supported debris removal. Surveillance of respiratory illness. Directed potential food-borne illness at shelters. Participated in news conference. HPP members treated injured patients. Provided nurses to help at shelters. Need to emphasize personal emergency plans. Prepare for psychological aid as well as other incident-related physical injuries. Access to prescriptions 24/7 for patients displaced. Kelly Coleman: [Showed burn map of how big the fire was.] Most mutual aid came from Bay Area alameda, contra costa counties. People had to flee south to Napa County. Shelter at Calistoga fairgrounds. Many already had health issues with disabilities and required regular medication. Napa was able to supply
ambulance and help from Medical Reserve Corps. members. Contra Costa county has medicines that were deployed. FAST was deployed as well as mental health workers. As the fire was contained, people returned to their homes, then further injuries/problems arose mental health issues, pet care, other injuries from digging around debris of destroyed homes. Found that mutual aid system worked well for this incident. Good to track resources like volunteers and other workers. Info sharing also important to get help when needed. Shaun Vincent: Shaun had only been working with Napa county for 2 months when fire hit. Fully staffed the Napa EOC in 24 hours. They wanted to work on repopulation plan fairly quickly but was not possible due to gravity of incident. People displaced had nothing with them, but had a lot of needs medical, mental, shelter, food, etc. Red Cross does not shelter pets and people were not willing to leave pets behind. They had to help with pet care. Donations poured in and required help organizing money and items. Restrooms were an issue. Napa County go showers, portable toilets. People brought food but wasn t the best sanitary condition. CIA (Culinary Institute of America) was about 5 miles away. Arranged for them to cook for the displaced people. Weather was an issue---went from rain to 105 degrees. Needed to coordinate rain gear and then swamp coolers. Took 8 days to organize long-term donation plan. 2,330 total service hours, 550 hours direct mental health services. Many partners helped. Zerlyn Ladua: She, Ron and Donata went to shelters in Middletown and Kelseyville. Red Cross shelters were too strict not only no pets but also no smoking or alcohol. Lake county sent animals in animal shelters to Napa to hold so animal shelter could be used for Lake county resident pets. Zerlyn was able to prescribe medicine which was a huge need. People who visited their site had a lot of different needs so required a lot of coordination. Would like to identify urgent care clinics in Alameda County. Would like to deploy better and prepare deployed people better set up expectations of deployed people so it s more realistic. Cynthia Frankel: Also deployed to Lake county fire. Contra Costa helped with providing medicine. Every organization has a different process so have to keep that in mind. There
was great community support for this incident. Roger Marsden: Was deployed 2 times. During first deployment, noticed that people wanted to know about reimbursement of their property and things of that nature. Roger was directed to just be available to talk to people if they wanted to talk. Different staff worked each day and hand-offs worked well. During second deployment, was assigned to the middle school. None of schools were burned. Teachers & Principals still worked even though they lost their homes. Kids were very resilient. Justin Koenig: Functional assessment Service Team (FAST). They went to shelters and identified people with disabilities of any kind and make sure they have what they need. $700Mil total insured losses; over $1Bill estimated uninsured losses. Prepaid cell phones were very good to have. Volunteers were great at organizing donations. Some resources can be acquired even if one may not think it is. One 90-year-old woman received a power chair, which also freed up staff from needed to assist her with every need. FAST could have been deployed faster. Questions: 1. How many urgent care facilities are in the counties? Answer by Karen Tait: None. Regular clinics/hospitals had to take care of urgent care. 2. How did people communicate? Answer by Shaun Vincent: Phone lines worked. Cell phones and email were also available. Napa County EOC has a separate phone bank so there was no need to bring in separate phone banks. 3. Was there a post disaster MOU? Answer by Kelly Coleman: FEMA doesn t like to reimburse if MOU does not exist. However, a post-disaster MOU can be submitted but must be done in 30 days after incident. This is challenging since people are still reeling from the incident and recovery is complicated. Contact Kelly for more information on the MOU.
Super Bowl Planning Activities 4. How was substance abuse addressed? Answer by Karen Tait: Difficult to deal with on this scale. Since so many people did not have their medications, prescribers had to make a judgment call. Also had to consider people who were on methadone treatments. Kelly Coleman: Activities will be mostly centered around SF and Santa Clara Counties. Lot of big celebs so there will be lots of security. Non critical injuries (if something happens) can be sent to other outside clinics/hospitals. Helicopters are available if people need air evacuation, but need a place for the helicopters to land. There will be some military presence. San Mateo wants to be involved but they don t have a trauma center. Zerlyn Ladua: Has been participating in BioWatch. Deploying air sniffers. Working with civil support team. If it s a planned event, there is a fee, it is not mutual aid. DOCs and people in area will be activated. There are no hotels in case of fire in area. Sandra Williams: Private planes will be flying in because of high rollers/celebs. It could also rain so have to keep in mind road hazards. Make sure workers have their phones handy. Lot of other events in the area so must stay mindful. Statewide Medical Health Exercise Zerlyn Ladua: After Action Report. 9-week activation period went well. Resource requesting was tested. Most participants surveyed said this exercise increased their knowledge of ICS. Identified some gaps: communication. Highlights: Resource testing, email, ReddiNet. For next exercise, would like to use other communication resources like CAHAN. Seemed like hospitals had their own exercises and didn t want to participate in the county exercise. Would like to follow up with hospitals to increase engagement. Camp Parks stepped up as well as the Coast Guard. PHEP trying to hire an exercise trainer. Will post a final AAR in next couple of weeks. John Rabold: [Talked about his experience as a HAM radio Operator during exercise.] On form they were required to fill out, it was good to have multiple choice answers since each sender/receiver could anticipate messages. 3 areas participated. Each volunteer brought their own radio and each site set up an
antennae. 1 radio operator stationed at each clinic site; 3 stationed at Public Health. 6 volunteers worked during the exercise; 3 were in Contra Costa. Each volunteered about 8 hours of their own time for this exercise. They have to be careful not to violate FCC regulations. Both sides of communication need to have same format of messages for sending/receiving. Requires a lot of training to be a HAM radio operator and it s voluntary so good to have some exercises to keep volunteers stimulated. It s good to have volunteers from outside locations so there could be better reception. It s also good to have forms with the same language and format for better communication Member Updates Donata Nilsen: Had more LTCF (long-term care facilities) participate on surveys. Working on quarterly drill schedule. Cynthia Frankel: EMS has partnerships with Children s Hospital to look at their readiness. There is one week in April to do an exercise. Dawn Lulua-Claxton: From Native American Health Center. For First on Scene exercise they have volunteers to help train. On day of exercise, they are willing to pay for overtime of participants up to 20 people. Zerlyn Ladua: Wanted to prepare First on Scene trauma care. PHEP has been doing this training for 4 years but will expand it to include clinics in March. Cynthia Frankel: ReddiNet will be available during Super Bowl. Brian Aiello: Will be doing ReddiNet polling frequently during week before and during Super Bowl. For the PPE cache, still waiting for papers and the Expected time of completion is early part of march. Everything is ready to go except for the paperwork, which need to be executed. Travis Kusman: Please make sure ReddiNet is up and ready. Ron Seitz: PPE Cache deployment. Waiting for PAPERs, waiting for MOU to be executed. Travis Kusman: PH/EMS is collaborating to better communicate. Brian Aiello: Hospitals have radios to communicate with ambulances and personnel. This is to add to that for better interoperability in case phone lines go down. For a redundant radio system.