CHESAPEAKE
Men and women in red vests stuffed bags with pill bottles, emergency medical information and papers warning residents that anthrax was in the air here. They worked for hours Friday morning at three long tables inside Great Bridge High School, where several city police officers stood by.
It was just a test.
The Chesapeake Health Department was trying to find out just how quickly - and how well - it could distribute anthrax medications to residents in rural areas in the southern part of the city should an outbreak ever happen.
It was the city's third drill, said Robert Rendin, the health department's emergency planner. But this was the first focused on areas of the city where homes can be miles apart.
"The idea," Rendin said, "is to time how long it will take to get all the bags to the city."
Health department employees and volunteers with the Chesapeake Medical Reserve Corps had 1,500 to get out Friday.
The exercise, which cost about $2,000, came on a day when anthrax was back in the news. A n Army scientist being investigated for the mailing of letters laced with Anthrax had killed himself. The letters sent shortly after the September 2001 terror attacks killed five people.
Chesapeake has been preparing for the drill for three months.
Set up in an assembly line, workers pulled bottles with blue and red tags from big boxes. Those tags represented the medicines' lot numbers that would be tracked by the health department in a real emergency. The bottles were wrapped in an emergency medical information sheet and stuck in plastic bags, which were then stuffed with newspapers full of information about Anthrax and the medication.
Those went into bigger cloth bags that, after lunch, were hauled onto school buses.
Group leader Michael Poyner climbed onto Bus B with several others headed toward the southern end of the city and a subdivision called Edinburgh, full of big brick and stone houses. The bus grumbled out of the parking lot at 12:40 p.m., 40 minutes later than scheduled.
The group had 194 bags to distribute.
"This is definitely rural," said one worker, as the bus passed fields.
Once in the neighborhood, Lynette Ansell of the Medical Reserve Corps made her way to the steps of the bus with the bags. Poyner handed them to her, and she distributed them.
"Oh, it's for sale," Ansell said after leaving one bag at a vacant house. "Should we have put one in an empty house?"
"Put it in there," Poyner said. "We've got mailboxes to fill."
The workers got back by 3:30, meeting their goal and, Poyner said, gaining valuable insight into rural delivery.
Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5555, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com
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Anthrax Drill
And what happens if not enough doses are delivered to a household? What happens when someone steals YOUR doses out of your mail box and now your family has none? What about the mobs of people and cars following the buses demanding 'their' doses?
This might look good on paper, and runs well on a warm summer day in the field when there is no panic, but can it work in the presence of a real attack? I doubt it.
Two things to remember
Anthrax is back in the news. One guy just made $5 million off the taxpayers for being blamed as a suspect, and the other suspect killed himself before the gov't could. It seems like the Anthrax we have to fear, is from our own gov't. As our gov't uses it to keep the people in fear so they obey and give up rights, it also seems to be making the stuff in underground labs. At least Chesapeake is prepared for when the US Gov't brand Anthrax is used against the people again.