Are Eugene and the University prepared for a bioterrorist attack?
Yes. No. Maybe?
In the wake of Thursday’s mail threat in Willamette Hall, local officials are working to assess how prepared the community is for a threat of this nature. Although Lane County Public Health officials announced Monday that final tests on the letter received by University physics professor Bernd Crasemann were negative for anthrax, the incident has raised concerns about the level of readiness in Eugene.
“We are as prepared to deal with this as anyone,” said Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey. “Are we prepared to anticipate an attack? No, but I don’t think anyone in this country is.”
Torrey was at a conference discussing Lane County’s level of preparedness when he heard the news about the incident at the University on Thursday. He said the response by University administrators and emergency response teams demonstrated the effectiveness of protocols implemented locally since the threat of bioterrorism began in late September.
“We’re the beneficiary of recent experience on the East Coast,” Torrey said. “One of the topics at (Thursday’s) meeting was the fact that the nation is involved in a war on two fronts. Our emergency crews need to be as well equipped as our troops in Afghanistan. Fortunately, we are blessed with a well-trained, state-of-the-art fire department HazMat team.”
But while emergency response teams may be well prepared, area medical centers could not handle a full-scale outbreak of the type experienced in New Jersey, according to Lane County Health Department program manager Karen Gillette.
“We have a system in place,” she said. “But we don’t have enough people.”
If the substance at the University had not tested negative for anthrax — as the Lane County Public Health department reported Saturday — an understaffed county health system could have been overwhelmed by large numbers of people asking for testing and treatment, Gillette said. However, she agreed with Torrey that the response to the incident was timely and effective, and she urged people who might still be concerned to “trust the experience” of local authorities who say the risk is minimal.
And according to Dr. Gerald Fleischli, director of the University Health Center, the risk is indeed minimal — even to those students and professors who were in Willamette Hall on Thursday.
The Health Center already had 100 doses of Cipro on hand, and after Thursday’s incident they ordered 100 more. Fleischli said that would have been enough to treat everyone who came into direct contact with the substance found on Thursday, had it been anthrax. The University is reasonably well prepared, he said, but some things could have gone better.
Fleischli said the Health Center was not aware of the events unfolding in Willamette Hall until a student came in after reading an e-mail sent out by Dietrich Belitz, head of the physics department.
Why the Health Center was not informed of the incident will be one of the subjects of the post-incident “debriefing” that will take place after things have calmed down, Fleischli said.
And while Fleischli is relieved that the incident turned out to not be a real case of bioterrorism, he is concerned that incidents like this will hurt preparedness for a legitimate emergency.
“Repeated occurrences will hone our ability to respond correctly,” he said of emergency procedures. “But they can also cause a sense of complacency.”