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Post by Summre Blakely on Nov 23, 2016 14:24:24 GMT
Something we have been discussing a lot in Dr. Byrd's Intro to Public Health class and that was sparked in my mind while watching the Contagion guest speaker was the idea of our country's preparedness plans for major epidemics or natural disasters. I know that each city and local region is required to have a plan, as does the nation. However, could we really handle a disaster of epic proportions? The next Spanish Flu perhaps? I always think back to the 1950s when children had drills for nuclear bombs in classes and they'd have those black and white films explaining what to do in case of a bombing. Today, we are more in threat of nuclear bombs as well as many other issues such as bioterrorism or major weather disasters, yet, I have never heard of an official plan of what to do in case of one of these emergencies. Sure, you can go online to usa.gov/prepare-for-disasters, but how many American citizens are doing this to check the national plans on what to do?
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Post by Lex Hurley on Nov 23, 2016 18:57:16 GMT
Unfortunately I would say that we as citizens have resources for short-term planning in the event of a catastrophe or epidemic, but many people's abilities to cope for an extended period of time are likely going to be uncertain (especially for those in urban areas). I would assume (and hope) that individuals at higher organizational levels will have both short- and long-term contingency plans available for different disaster scenarios, but as I don't know anything about them, I won't try to comment. One thing that we often focus on in these public health disaster scenario discussions are how to best use and protect our hospitals and pharmacies -- which makes sense. We'll need a place to care for the sick and wounded and new medicines will be rare to come by, so an ample stock is needed. However, what happens when our hospital loses its power because no one is working to keep the power plant up and running? What happens when we lose all running water because the local plant is abandoned? It's very easy to forget about these essential resources because they've always been around, but without them we're pretty much sent back to the dark ages. One would hope that both of these agencies will have contingency plans available or at least the ability to run on 'autopilot' without staffing, but many electricity and power centers are so complicated and understaffed that they can barely manage to control for equipment failures and vanadlous sabotage as is described in this article from the Wall Street Journal www.wsj.com/articles/how-america-could-go-dark-1468423254 |
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Post by Megan Mikesell on Nov 23, 2016 20:31:44 GMT
I think public education on preparedness would be a great idea. I agree with you that we are at a great risk in today's world and having a plan in place would make me personally feel better. However, I also believe that the public awareness campaign that would be required would also cause some level of panic in the population. Some people just prefer to live their lives in the dark pretending the threat is not there. Even considering myself a somewhat prepared person, I have never gone online to that site to see what the official national plan is. Do you think we should have a national plan distributed to the public and practiced in schools?
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Post by ghannaba on Nov 23, 2016 20:35:50 GMT
I love how you brought up power plants Lex. That has been a major issue for Lubbock power as we were not connected to ERCOT which is the Energy Reliability Council of Texas. The LP&L decided to formally initiate joining the ERCOT grid and hopes to share in the transmission and markets with about 90% of the rest of the state. (http://www.ercot.com) We had been apart of a smaller SPP grid; I am not sure why exactly we decided to switch now (part of it is financial as it is my understanding Lubbock's growth is increasing the load, and in order to meet demand, LP&L would need to build another plant and its cheaper to link... blah blah blah. Anyways, In the event of outages and problems with either East or West coast, Texas has created its own grid so in effect, we would not experience outages like the rest of the nation unless our grid was hit specifically. We do have connections with the Eastern grid (I think 2 DC and maybe 1 AC based on some unscientific searching around, i.e. dr wiki. And other unofficial sources). But in the event of infrastructural stress or abandonment, dependency on city services would put many people in crisis.
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