Gateway Airport prepared for any swine flu assault (Arizona)
http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/2009/06/26/20090626mr-pandemic0627.html
The Valley’s Mesa-based reliever airport is gearing up to operate with a surprisingly lean staff should the Swine Flu pandemic decimate the airfield’s workforce.
Keeping Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport flightworthy with a skeleton crew was added earlier this month to mandatory emergency preparedness training that airport managers say is vital to sustain services when they’re most needed at the former Air Force Base.
The virus causing the flu can pass undetected through most airport security checkpoints unless they have heat senors that sense body temperatures. And unlike manmade and natural disasters, the disease is invisible until it strikes, said airport spokesman, Brian Sexton.
“Today, a sick child in Africa can directly impact our health here in Arizona,” he said. “It’s not a matter of if, but when. Everyone, not just airports, has a responsibility to be prepared.”
Gateway administrators and employees say they accept the emergency readiness regimen as a “social and legal” obligation to preserve one of the Valley’s front lines for transportation of manpower and supplies essential to the survival of thousands of residents.
At the state’s biggest airport, Phoenix Sky Harbor International, a “continuity of operations plan is consistently exercised and reviewed in the event of incidents like this,” said airport spokeswoman, Alisa Smith.
Operating Gateway with a couple dozen employees, almost a quarter of its entire workforce, may sound like an invitation to chaos, said Williams.
But with the H1N1 swine-flu virus outbreak now classified as a global pandemic and expectations that the disease will make many more Arizonans ill and unable to work this fall, preparing to operate the airport with a decimated staff is essential, she said.
“Luck is not a strategic plan,” Williams said. “We have to quit the denial that this can’t happen to us.”
Gateway’s emergency preparedness strategy starts with the well-being of all employees and their families, Williams said.
‘If employees are prepared at home and they know the well-being of their families can be sustained then they can better serve the airport’s needs,” Sexton said.
The home-front plan includes an extensive, detailed list of family emergency data information, medical history, family emergency supply and readiness checklists that employees are asked to complete and keep in their homes.
“Like a firefighter entering a burning building, they’re trained to protect self before entering,” Sexton said. “We are being trained to protect ourselves and family during a crisis, then we head to the airport to serve others.”
And it’s just the first phase of a comprehensive drill that goes well beyond what most businesses do to prepare employees for emergencies, Sexton said.
Phase two, which is in the preliminary planning stage, will concentrate on the growing mission of the Disaster Employee Support Team to serve as the employee liaison and advocate during a disaster or other emergency, Williams said.
The team would serve as the primary source for status updates and human resources information to allow operational managers and critical personnel to focus on response recovery, she said. The team would coordinate its updates with the airport’s public information officer.
Phase three will focus on the extended family and pooling available resources to family members while employees are engaged in airport response and recovery efforts.
Though the disaster plan is meticulous and its training requirements time-consuming, the airport has a head start on emergency response in that scores of its employees are already skilled in two or more technical disciplines, airport officials said.
“Cross training of staff is a critical component of emergency preparedness,” said Airport Executive Director, Lynn Kusy. “Our airfield maintenance technicians have been formally trained in airport operations, most of our department leaders have experience in more than one element of airport management, and we make it a practice to hire deeply skilled aviation employees.”
Chile reports four new deaths due to A/H1N1 flu
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-06/27/content_11609900.htm
The Chilean authorities confirmed on Friday four new deaths due to A/H1N1 flu, raising the death toll in the country to 12.
The authorities said that two patients were from Nuble province, one from Valdivia and one from Osorio.
The victims from Nuble, southern Chile, were a 48-year-old female patient and a 47-year-old male, said the authorities.
The female patient was treated with anti-viral drug Oseltamivir from June 15, but she was taken to the hospital due to complications on June 19.
The male patient did not seek medical consultation on time. When he went to the health center, he was hospitalized and received treatment.
Nuble’s health official Ivan Paul Espinoza said that most of the cases showed light symptoms.
The other death was a male patient of 41 years old from Valdivia, 800 km south to Santiago, the capital of Chile.
The seven-year-old girl in Osorio is the first one who did not have symptoms and the first child who died in the country.
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