Information for criminal justice practitioners, students and academics.

Three-day exercise tests emergency preparedness

 

 “If this had been an actual emergency, much more than M&Ms would have been at stake. That point was not lost on many of the 350 volunteers who showed up Thursday to help the Panhandle Health District participate in what was billed as a successful statewide test of emergency preparedness. “When I was riding over on the bus, I thought, 'This could be real,'” said Sandy Bertuccelli, a Red Cross volunteer who has staffed several actual emergencies, including Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans last summer. Bertuccelli praised the three-day exercise, which aimed to evaluate whether staff at the state's seven health districts, including North Idaho's, could smoothly distribute medication – in this case, plain and peanut M&Ms – to masses of people. The exercise began on Tuesday, when staff members learned about the trouble they would face, said Susan Cuff, spokeswoman for the health district. Even Cuff agreed the scenario was a little far-fetched: Terrorists seized the distribution sites of local newspapers and tainted all the printed copies with anthrax. The poisoned papers were then delivered throughout the five-county district by news carriers and in news boxes, raising the prospect of mass illness.”

(Spokesman Review, 30Jun06, Jonel Aleccia) http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=138000

 

 

Avanir Gets $2 Million Grant

 

“Drug development company Avanir Pharmaceuticals said Friday it received a

$2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease under a joint research program to come up with a treatment to the deadly anthrax infection. The government grant will fund pre-clinical development of AVP-21D9, Avanir's potential anti-anthrax drug candidate.” (Houston Chronicle, 30Jun06, AP) http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4014991.html

 

 

[Massachusetts] Health officials say they’re not prepared for a major epidemic

 

“An avian flu outbreak, torrential flood or bioterrorism attack could give your local public health pros a run for their money. Many municipal public health authorities cannot adequately prepare for such emergencies and also fulfill their day-to-day inspection and sanitation responsibilities, according to a new report from the Coalition for Local Public Health. More than 70 percent of local public health offices surveyed said they do not have enough staff to consistently fulfill their duties, according to the coalition's ‘Strengthening Local Public Health in Massachusetts’ report. Of the state's 352 local public health authorities, 191 -- including those in Milford, Framingham, Marlborough, Waltham and Dedham -- responded to the survey. According to survey results, 71 percent of local health officials said they do not have enough staff to consistently fulfill their duties to the public and to local and state officials at all times; 18 percent of public health workers will be eligible to retire in the next two years; and 72 percent of local board of health members have not participated in a state training program.” (Milford Daily News, 29Jun06, Emelie Rutherford)

http://www.milforddailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=94682

 

 

Biosecurity Action Plan

“The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee takes up the issue of America’s biodefenses in a hearing today on Capitol Hill. This is a serious topic worthy of Senate review precisely because so much has been done to prepare America from both a biological attack and a natural pandemic, and yet so much remains to be done. A report on biosecurity published by the Center for American Progress last week, ‘Biosecurity: A Comprehensive Action Plan,’ details why the United States must develop more systematic and comprehensive solutions to the biological security threats facing our nation. This argument was also made by panelists at a Center for American Progress luncheon conference last week. The report was presented by Jonathan Tucker, a co-author and a senior fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Joining him as discussants were Laura Segal, public affairs director at the Trust for America’s Health, and David Heyman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Andrew Grotto, the other co-author of the report and a senior national security analyst at the Center, moderated the discussion.” (Center for American Progress, 28Jun06)

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1816853

 

Industry seeks to avoid patchwork of chemical security standards

 

“While expressing support for newly introduced chemical security legislation, an advocate for the chemical industry Thursday urged Congress to strengthen the bill's pre-emption of state laws on the subject. ‘We need to make sure that we don't have a patchwork of standards at the state level,’ Marty Durbin, director of federal affairs for the American Chemistry Council, told a House Homeland Security subcommittee. The bill, introduced by Homeland Security Economic Security Subcommittee Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif., would pre-empt only laws that ‘frustrate’ federal regulation and allows those that do not conflict with federal law to remain in place. Although it was not discussed at Thursday's hearing, legislation introduced by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, also would leave state laws intact if they do not conflict with federal law, without addressing those that might ‘frustrate’ federal regulation. Lungren introduced his bill Wednesday. It would give the Homeland Security Department oversight of the nation's estimated 15,000 chemical plants, with the authority to rank and assess those plants based on risk.” (GovExec.com; 30Jun06; Michaela May, Congress Daily) http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=34462&dcn=todaysnews

 

House intel chair chides Negroponte on WMD

 

 “The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee accused U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte's office Thursday of downplaying the significance of chemical-weapons finds in Iraq. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, said in a letter to Negroponte that intelligence officials at a press briefing Wednesday organized by his office misled journalists about the significance of 500 munitions containing mustard and sarin nerve agents discovered since May 2004. Intelligence officials at the briefing told journalists the weapons predated the 1991 Gulf War, were too degraded to be used as originally intended and posed no threat to U.S. forces deployed in the region during the run-up to the 2003 invasion. ‘I am very disappointed by the inaccurate, incomplete, and occasionally misleading comments made by the briefers,’ Hoekstra said in the letter, a copy of which was released by his office.” (The Arizona Daily Star, 30Jun06, Reuters)

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/135926

 

Psychiatrist backs Japan’s doomsday guru

 

“The doomsday cult guru sentenced to death over a 1995 nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway is mentally unfit and shows no reaction to his children, a psychiatrist defending him said Thursday. The Tokyo High Court has rejected two appeal motions filed on behalf of Aum Supreme Truth founder Shoko Asahara, a nearly blind former acupuncturist who preached of a coming apocalypse. He has little chance left of escaping the death penalty unless the Supreme Court accepts his lawyers' stance that he has a mental disorder. Haruo Akimoto, one of five psychiatrists who examined the guru at the request of his lawyers, said outside court that he was sure that Asahara was ill and accused the courts of succumbing to public pressure.”

(The Nation, 30Jun06, Agence France Presse)

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/worldhotnews/read.php?newsid=30007617

 

 

Anti-terror raid intelligence was credible, says Met chief

 

“The intelligence source for the anti-terrorist raid in east London, which failed to uncover a chemical bomb, had provided information in the past which was corroborated, police said yesterday. Senior Metropolitan Police officers again apologized, at a meeting of the force's authority, for the ‘harm and disruption’ caused in the raid on June 2, but they insisted that it was justified. In the clearest defence yet of the operation, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Commissioner, told the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA): ‘This time we did not find what we were looking for and it seems we were wrong. Once again, I apologise for the harm and disruption.’ However, he made plain that the word ‘wrong’ applied only to the fact that the chemical device was not found in the house in Forest Gate. He added: ‘The raid itself I am perfectly content was justified and the raid was carried out extremely well by the Metropolitan Police.’”

(Telegraph.co.uk, 30Jun06, John Steele)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/30/nterr30.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/30/ixuknews.html

 

 

Search unearths mortar [bomb] at site of WWII chemical fort

 

“Searchers looking for old munitions on a farm that once was an Army base used for chemical weapons training unearthed a liquid-filled mortar [bomb], but officials said Wednesday it would be days before they determine its contents. The 4.2-inch mortar [bomb] will be kept in a holding area until a unit comes from Maryland to investigate, said Pat Robbins, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. Located in rural Etowah County in northeast Alabama, Camp Sibert was the largest U.S. chemical weapons school during World War II. The Army sold the base decades ago after removing tons of debris, but it is still checking to make sure all munitions were cleared. A search in 2002 located an old artillery shell containing the chemical phosgene, a choking agent, in a field near a house. Robbins said the mortar [bomb] was found in the same area, which was once an artillery range where troops trained to use chemical agents.” (al.com; 28Jun06; AP, The Gadsen Times) http://www.al.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-22/1151521770159360.xml&storylist=alabamanews

 

Wireless Patient Tracking in Disaster Management

 

“Communications breakdown was the number one complaint made by the emergency personnel who responded to disasters at the World Trade Centers and Pentagon, and later Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. During Katrina, EMS rescued hundreds of walking wounded from the waters and airlifted them to triage areas, only for them to become misplaced in the system, sometimes for days. In response, Congress subsequently released billions of dollars to help companies develop systems to improve communications and data sharing between first responders and hospitals during mass casualty events. Companies of all sizes answered the call. One was Iomedex in Seattle, Wash., makers of MobileIRIS (Mobile Incident Response Information System), a wireless patient tracking system that enables first responders to track the movements of casualties through triage and treatment using bar codes. It also provides local healthcare organizations with a common database from which to exchange information and access patients’ electronic health records (EHR). On April 17, 2006, the Boston Athletic Association, in cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Health and Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, used MobileIRIS technology to track 22,500 runners during the annual 26.2-mile Boston Marathon. Bar codes were imprinted on the runner’s bibs and scanned whenever they stopped for services and re-entered the race. The idea was not to track their every move throughout the race, as much as to note the locations and times they entered and exited the route. In this way, the runners were locatable within a short distance. In a USA Today article posted April 15, 2006, Nancy Ridley, assistant commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is noted as saying the marathon would provide a good training ground to test a patient tracking system that could be used following a disaster. A terrorist attack might be another appropriate use.” (Health Management Technology, July 2006, Mike McBride) http://www.healthmgttech.com/archives/0706/0706wireless_patient.htm