NYC-WTC_000230640

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document Cc _ PGOSOE8TTO OOTOWT? ALIO v ' to detect any sudden outbreak of disease. . Center collapses. City. prepares to fi wwe er bioterror attack Experts say more needs to By LUKE CYPHERS, TER! THOMPSON and ROBERT INGRASSIA DALY NEWS STAFF WRITERS With Attorney General John Ashcroft warning of a “clear and present danger” of a followup terrorist attack using hazardous materials, city officials are redoubling efforts to protect against a chemical or biological assault. :-- “These SqUAGS, Which usually respond ' te ‘< : The city has a plan to respond to any| to gas leaks and cother possible poison. bioterrorism, but security experts and! , ings, are equipped with chemi health officials said the city and federal| ‘ bisiggical “agent detectors, nerve gas government must do more thre ‘iy ations, ane ; Protect? tte Sanaa “We can’t forget about thi atonce! members also are ned to su the World Trade Center attack cools off,” trucks to.decontaminate victims. said Stephen Morse, director of the . Experts,warn that if terrorists were to Public Health Preparedness Center at \ succeed win, unleashing sma pOx or Columbia University’s Mailman School nthrax germs, the attack cauld go of Public Health. “We have to keep build- _, unnaticed fer, days. . ing our response system.” Early detection of an outbreak is con- Some terrorist experts warn that bio- sidered a ‘key to New York's plan for logical and chemical attacks, such as the , \treatment of bioterrorism victims and its release of anthrax or the spraying of sarin . ~ gas, are the next frontier of terrorism. Others downplay the likelihood of such warfare, saying biological agents are difficult to obtain and even harder to spread in a way that would infect large , numbers of people. Despite the uncertainty, New York offi- Cials have established a program designed 5) oe > _ oe ~ Quietly, simulated attacks have been , conducted to test response efforts. : Special! squads of firefighters have been created to handle chemical inci- dents, though many of them are believed to have perished in the World Trade NYC-WTC_000230640 efforts to prevent the spread of any bio- chemical attack. P y To that end, a computer system main-* tained by the city Office of Emergency Management evaluates daily input from 911 calls, hospital admissions, sales of flu medicine and other health data, accord- ing to Jerome Hauer, a security expert and former director of that city agency. “If you see a spike in emergency room admissions, you can track it quickly and investigate it,” he said. “It could be bad tuna fish at school or it could be some- — thing more threatening.” The Health Department also has trained emergency room workers and family doctors to report the appearance of odd diseases That program helped the city recognize the presence of the West Nile virus in 1999. : has to be a big part of the program.” be done \ , Mobilization planned — At the first recognition of an sut- break, health officials would mobilize trained staffers to interview sick people _ and physicians to determine where vic- , \ tims were exposed. . ol The city would activate up to 300 cen- ters across the five boroughs to distrib- , ute antibiotics or antidotes. It also would alternative care sites so hospital beds could be reserved for the seriously il. Last week, the Greater New York Hospital Association conducted a semi- , nar for hospital workers, and, officials said, the trdining will be expanded in the coming months. “This needs to he done not just in hos- , pitals, but for physicians in private prac- tice,” said Dr. Allan Rosenfield, dean of : Columbia’s Mailman School of Public : Health. “In a lot of these cases, doctors aren't familiar with the agents, and that ght 'S WAEOLOO “AYUSENUAM ‘SMAN ATIVG