District 8 Pan Flu Exercise

District 8 Planning Council July Meeting Minutes Jackson County Education Center - Seymour

The meeting was opened by Valerie Luchauer, Lawrence County EMA Director.

District Pandemic Flu Tabletop Exercise hosted by Indiana State Department of Health Comments:

Big things all are going to face are mass casualty incidents. How many have Mass Casualty plans in place. Mass Casualty class coming out by state in August 18-20 at Atterbury. Involve your Coroners even though it may be difficult to get them to attend.

Information sharing – network IHAN – info from fed to state to health dept. to hospitals. Some of that information could be shared to first responders. Seymour (JC) is working on setting up mass email to filter through to first responders. One issue seen in the exercise, it still appears there is a communication gap between state and federal agencies.

Brainstorming on Training

What types of training do you see for your agency?

Mass Casualty NIMS 300 NIMS 400 Make use of Atterbury facility for LE training (Bartholomew County) Special Ops training for their officers. HAZMAT Training (Jackson County) Awareness on July 29 and Ops August 12 NIMS 700 needs to be completed by this time. Deadline is approaching.

There will not be any reimbursement for declared emergency or disaster workers and community if NIMCAST not completed and NIMS compliant. Counties need to be completed with NIMSCAST by August 30 so that state can be completed by Sept. 30.

Dave Barrabee, IDHS, has an intern if help is needed on NIMSCAST or get with your field coordinator.

What is keeping us from training?

Overtime Travel Money?

Look for different training that you would like to see happen within your county or within the district and let your EMA Director know and we will see if it doable. Speaker: Simeon Stern, Public Health Coordinator Jennings County gave a report on SINBAD. This was a large exercise held in December 2005 at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center for District 9. Simeon showed portion of a DVD that was developed from this exercise for training. It is broken down day by day and discipline type on the DVD. For further information regarding the DVD contact Simeon at the Jennings County Public Health Office.

Discipline Comments:

Vicky Vandeventer – Hospitals

Hospitals are working on grant submissions.

Vanessa Findley– Health

A Pandemic Flu tabletop exercise was held. The LPHC grant will be coming in August. Mass prophy plan updates are still occurring. The town Hall meetings went well. Pan Flu plan Update – working on drafts but waiting on template from State

Greg Duke – LE

Meeting on July 10 for chiefs and Sheriffs 15 out of 22 agencies were able to attend. The meeting was organizational in nature. Questionnaires were completed along with maps; they were copied and distributed to attendees. Greg is preparing a book for each of the agencies to have with this information and additional in depth information to hand out. Information for different tasks or qualifications will be easy to search for. The Committee will come together in future along with LE mutual aid agreements.

John Hooker – Fire Training Committee

The Committee was put together to explore District Fire training issues and to develop a District Fire Training Plan. There will be funds for this training plan from the new fireworks law. One paid and one volunteer from each of the seven counties was requested along with HAZMAT representatives.

June 16 Meeting – a list of instructors in counties and certifications was created along with identifying departments in each county and what training needs they have. Locations in county for training were discussed along with Fixed versus mobile training facilities. A spreadsheet was handed out for each county and then discussed. The Committee was assigned tasks to be completed for next meeting.

Duane – EMA Newsletter for District 8. Still needs a name so if you have any ideas please get with Duane.

CEDAP Grants next round coming up again in August 1.

Any information that you would like to see in newsletter send to Duane.

Website – Send info to Duane, There is different links in there: Weather, Amber Alerts, News Updates, etc. Errors can be corrected by emailing Duane. www.district8indiana.com

Rich Lamborn – Quinco Behavioral Health was a guest at today’s meeting.

Kathy Dayhoff Dwyer – IDHS Report

All D8 has completed with grant process and are just finalizing a few things

For the 2006 grants, the state is requesting duplicates made of signature pages. Four copies of original sig. pages will be needed. Kathy will keep copy, county will keep copy, and rest will be sent to the state. All grant proposals will be done in writing. No verbal requests. Committees of those on the signature page are to review the grant. Kathy will be heavily involved in this process. NEW INFORMATION SINCE THE MEETING: 2006 GRANTS THE STATE DETERMINED ALL PURCHASES AND WHAT COUNTIES ARE ELIGIBLE FOR THOSE PURCHASES. LAPTOP COMPUTERS, MOBILE COMMAND CENTER (MCC), DISTRICT PLANNING COUNCIL COORDINATOR, DISTRICT MOBILE AMBULANCE SUPPLY TRAILER (DMAT) AND DISTRICT EXERCISE MONEY WAS ALL THAT WAS ALLOWED FOR 2006. COUNTIES DID NOT HAVE ANY CHOICE IN THESE DECISIONS. ALL COUNTIES WERE OFFERED THE LAPTOP COMPUTERS. THE STATE CHOSE THE COUNTIES THEY WANTED TO RECEIVE THE MCC, DMAT, AND FISCAL AGENT FOR COORDINATOR AND EXERCISE FUNDS.

Dispatchers and 911 directors will be coming together and developing a communications plan. Training will be in the near future on 800 MHz equipment. (November District Planning Council Meeting)

Judy Gilliland– State Health District 8 Coordinator

The State just sent in their side of the grant. A cut of 14 percent in the grant is expected it is too early to share outcome. Next year they anticipate even more cuts. Sept 6-7 will be a conference for LPHC and health dept people. An orientation package is being created for new people. Jackson County has a new LPHC. Monroe county position is vacant at this time but may possibly have a new one starting the 24th. The state is looking at gap analysis. The state has created an exercise committee. We need to see about coordinating ours with them.

Woody (Ken Woodall) Exercise Program Manager - IDHS

Backfill for exercises is an allowable expense.

Policy also states that you can pay for volunteers. However, the state has to have policy in place and doesn’t but don’t hold your breath for one any time soon.

District Exercise Committee

Full Scale this fall or next year early. When break out in disciplines – draft someone from your discipline to sit on committee. The Committee will start meeting to get this thing pulled together right away. ALL paperwork will be contracted out so the committee is not overloaded.

Meeting adjourned to discipline sessions, room assignments given.

Next Meeting: September 21 9:00 a.m. Jackson County Education Center, Seymour. Topic: Media Relations – Preparing Press Releases and Dealing with the Media.