USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL Air University Air War College Maxwell AFB, Alabama
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#83 24 July 2001 USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL Air University Air War College Maxwell AFB, Alabama Welcome to the CPC Outreach Journal. As part of USAF Counterproliferation Center’s mission to counter weapons of mass destruction through education and research, we’re providing our government and civilian community a source for timely counterproliferation information. This information includes articles, papers and other documents addressing issues pertinent to US military response options for dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical threats and attacks. It’s our hope this information resource will help enhance your counterproliferation issue awareness. Established here at the Air War College in 1998, the USAF/CPC provides education and research to present and future leaders of the Air Force, as well as to members of other branches of the armed services and Department of Defense. Our purpose is to help those agencies better prepare to counter the threat from weapons of mass destruction. Please feel free to visit our web site at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-cps.htm for in-depth information and specific points of contact. Please direct any questions or comments on CPC Outreach Journal to Lt. Col. Michael W. Ritz, CPC Intelligence/Public Affairs or JoAnn Eddy, CPC Outreach Editor, at (334) 953- 7538 or DSN 493-7538. The following articles, papers or documents do not necessarily reflect official endorsement of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or other US government agencies. Reproduction for private use or commercial gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. All rights are reserved Jul 16, 2001 Workers train for biological warfare GEORGE CORYELL of The Tampa Tribune Emergency workers want to save everyone. After a 10-car pileup on the freeway, ambulances roll and everyone is rushed to the emergency room. It's standard procedure. If a terrorist unleashes a biological weapon, things change. If the attack strikes hundreds or thousands of people, there would be no time for prolonged efforts to save every individual. With patients overwhelming hospitals, decisions would be brutal. Those least-severely affected would receive treatment. Others who required more intensive care likely wouldn't get it - and the lost time could cost lives. It's an uncomfortable idea for civilian medical workers, but one they are learning about from the military. Triage - grouping patients for evacuation or treatment based on the severity of symptoms - would be necessary. ``We never thought we'd have to be planning for this,'' said Ron Wegner, commander of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team based in Hudson. The DMATs are a civilian version of military mobile hospitals, and his unit is one of five in Florida. The federal government created DMATs so civilian emergency or health workers can assist in disasters that overwhelm local emergency medical personnel. The National Disaster Management System and U.S. Public Health Service call the shots, and the volunteers are considered temporary federal employees. They must be ready to leave on short notice and operate for at least three days, providing medical care at a site they set up. There are 45 DMATs nationwide. All have learned the basics for reacting to a biological attack, the type of terrorism t attack for which they are most likely to be called for. With an explosion or chemical attack, there is a fixed number of patients. Hospitals and emergency personnel know right away whether DMATs are needed. But a biological attack is unpredictable. There is no way to know how far a disease will spread, when it will end or how many patients will clog hospitals. DMATs are crucial in this situation. ``With a chemical event, it's fast-acting. It's sudden, so you know what you need to do right now,'' said John Babb, acting director of the Division of Emergency Response and Operations for the National Disaster Medical Service. ``With a biological event, you wouldn't know what happened until people started going to hospitals. ``You'd have to figure out it was a biological event and try to figure out where they were exposed. There's much more chance we would be used for a biological event than a chemical event because of that time frame.'' An added problem with contagious biological agents is that health workers and other hospital patients are at risk, Wegner said. DMATs would set up different staging areas to treat those who are contaminated. ``With a biological attack, it stays ignited and keeps moving,'' said Michael Hopmeier, a DMAT consultant and chief of Unconventional Concepts Inc., which advises the military on special operations and counterterrorism. AMERICANS BECAME alarmed about terrorism in the early 1990s when they heard about emerging diseases and the world reserves of biological weapons. Federal money helped states train emergency workers to deal with biological, chemical and nuclear attacks. The 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack and the Oklahoma City bombing seemed to confirm those fears. Explosives, not germs, are still the most likely tools of terror, experts say, but biological warfare already has come to the United States. In 1984, members of the Rajneeshee cult in Oregon sprayed salmonella bacteria on salad bars to dampen voter turnout for an election. More than 700 people became ill, but nobody died. Experts say the most likely biological agents would be smallpox, plague and anthrax. Smallpox is considered the worst. In 1980, the World Health Assembly announced smallpox vaccination efforts had succeeded and the disease was eradicated. It did not know that the now- defunct Soviet Union, which initiated the push for worldwide vaccination, had grown vast quantities of the smallpox virus for use in bombs and missiles. Not all of those reserves have been accounted for. An aerosol release of the smallpox virus likely would be highly infectious, Defense Department biological warfare specialists say. There is no treatment, and the virus kills almost a third of those infected. Few in this country have been vaccinated in the past quarter-century. A DISASTER RESPONSE industry has grown from the federal money for training, but Hopmeier questioned emphasis on scenarios involving specific diseases. Training should be more generalized, he said. If the procedures are kept simple, emergency workers can adapt them to their daily routines so they become familiar. Hopmeier pointed to the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, which killed 600,000 people in the United States and 21 million worldwide. A new flu strain could be worse than biological weapons, he said, because no vaccine would be available, and with modern travel, it could span the world in weeks. Simple hospital sterilization and disinfection procedures helped stop Spanish flu, and those basic safety precautions are valuable, he said. ``If you can deal with that, you can deal with any other disease,'' Hopmeier said. So far, DMATs mostly have dealt with natural disasters. Members of Wegner's team recently returned from Houston, where they helped after Tropical Storm Allison. Floodwaters had damaged hospitals, forcing five to shut down. The U.S. Air Force set up a hospital in the Astrodome with a 12-bed emergency room. DMATs ran three ERs in the city, each treating up to 200 patients a day. With a biological event, DMATs would set up clinics or field hospitals in shopping centers or other areas so existing hospitals wouldn't be overwhelmed. They probably would transport surplus patients elsewhere via military flights, Wegner said. Last year in Denver, federal and local agencies were given the task of coping with a simulated aerial spray of plague bacteria. After the three-day exercise, Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies estimated 1,000 people would have died had the attack been real. ``It was out of control,'' Hopmeier said. George Coryell covers the military and can be reached at (813) 259-7966. http://tampatrib.com/FloridaMetro/MGAENQEJ7PC.html USF lab studies germ warfare, disease outbreaks GEORGE CORYELL of The Tampa Tribune Published: Jul 15, 2001 TAMPA - As Tampa celebrated Super Bowl XXXV in January, health professionals at the University of South Florida checked out complaints of fever and muscle aches at area hospitals. For three weeks, researchers called a half dozen emergency rooms every eight hours. Were patients reporting respiratory infection or diarrhea? Yes? Was the patient at the Gasparilla parade or the Super Bowl? ``We followed any cases, asking if there was any common link,'' said Jacqueline Cattani, director of USF's Center for Biological Defense, a joint effort between the school's College of Public Health and the Florida Department of Health. The process was part of an early warning system designed to spot the release of a biological toxin. If a link were established between attending these events and illness, it could be a sign terrorists had spread an infectious agent. Other attendees could be warned. ``The problem you get is when you have thousands of people who have no reason to be sick complaining of similar things,'' Cattani said. The money for the alert system came from the Department of Defense. Though terrorism is the military's focus, the technology being developed likely will be used more often to spot emerging infectious diseases, Cattani said. USF received $1.7 million this year to set up a laboratory for detecting biological agents. The lab includes a level 3 containment area. Level 3 agents include plague and anthrax. About $500,000 of the defense money is going to education - training hospital staff on infectious agents and how to collect samples - and to development of new technologies for studying viruses. Another $3.8 million is expected this year by USF and other Florida universities . Technicians at the USF lab can determine within four hours whether a sample contains a biological or chemical agent.