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"Hey,
Dad, what if we had a really bad hurricane and it blew in all kinds of
really bad diseases?"
"It
would be bad, Son."
"Dad,
what would happen if right after the hurricane and all of the bad
diseases we had a big earthquake, then a huge meteorite hit the earth?
What would happen then?"
"I
don’t know. It would be really bad, Son. I guess everybody would
die."
"But
Dad, what if everybody didn’t die? Then what?"
"What
if?" It’s one of the great questions in life. It ranks right
behind, "What is the meaning of life?" and "Why are we
here?" Personally, I go to the Bible to find the answers to the
first two questions. But, "What if?" Now that one is often
difficult and sometimes impossible to answer. Yet, it is a question
needing to be asked and answered as often as possible. The question
"what if" helps us develop contingency plans. It helps us
prepare. When we ask the question, "what if?" we take a look
at a situation from varying angles and we are able to at least diminish
the number of surprises we face.
On
June 17th we at the Alabama Department of Agriculture & Industry,
along with many other state and local agencies, conducted an exercise
asking the question, "What if we had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth
disease?" I first asked myself that question back in early 2001
when I became Acting State Veterinarian. It was right in the middle of
the huge foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the United Kingdom. As I
continued to ask that question, we called together several state
agencies to sit around a table in our department’s boardroom. As the
question "What if we had foot-and-mouth disease in Alabama?"
was asked, each agency stated what its responsibilities would be.
Over
the past few years, we have tried to make the question more complicated.
"What if the foot-and-mouth outbreak were a terrorist act?"
"What if it was discovered at a large livestock show?"
"What if we had to stop movement of all livestock in the
state?" The more these types of questions we asked, the more we are
able to plan for those scenarios. The answer to these questions comes
from a collective group of state and local authorities and industry
players who would be involved in such an event. At the June 17th
exercise, we were able to put many of these answers into play and see
how practical and workable our plan is.
The
exercise itself highlighted some special questions. "What if we had
to put our personnel in masks, gloves and water-resistant coveralls on a
day when it’s 98o F?" "What if someone ‘over-heats’ out
on a farm while collecting samples?" "What if a producer
decides to not abide by a written quarantine?" An after-action
report on the exercise will answer more of these questions. We will
connect more of the dots. Our plan will be stronger.
We
often use foot-and-mouth disease as a model. However, much of the
planning for one foreign animal disease can be translated into another.
Even in the case of avian influenza, many of those involved would be the
same as with foot-and-mouth disease. There would be different industry
representatives involved, but we do plan with them for poultry-specific
events. Nevertheless, we are building relationships and swapping
business cards while the sun is shining and the winds are calm.
Not
only are many of the strategies interchangeable between foreign animal
diseases, but they are also interchangeable with natural disasters,
terrorist acts and other disasters. We are told that 80 percent of all
planning is pretty much the same. In fact, we should all have a generic
disaster plan for our own families that answers, to the best of our
abilities, questions like: "What if the electricity were off for a
day or more?" "What if the water supply were disrupted for
more than a day?" "What if we could not buy gasoline for a few
days?" "What if we couldn’t get to the pharmacy to get
essential medication for a period of a few days?" Whether we are
planning for a hurricane, a foreign animal disease or a blizzard, we
need to think in terms of: "What would we do in the first few days—before
the Calvary rides in and saves us?"
I
used to ask myself, "What if we had a case of BSE or mad cow
disease?" In the spring of 2006, that question was answered as the
following epidemiological investigation and follow-up unfolded. It was,
in my estimation, handled very well, in part because we had asked the
question, "What if?" So, what if we have a foot-and-mouth
disease outbreak at the same time as a Category 4 hurricane ravages the
coast and southern half of Alabama, then a meteorite hits the
state.......? Well, I don’t know what we would do, but at least I have
asked the question. |
