With threats of hurricanes, terrorist attacks and flu pandemics fresh in their minds, local officials from around the state were briefed Thursday about what measures that state has taken to deal with those disasters.
Maryland Emergency Management Agency Director John Droneburg told participants at the Maryland Association of Counties conference that local officials had key roles to play.
“All disasters start or end at a local level,” he said.
“Maryland has taken a tremendous leadership role” in coordinating response to disasters, said Tom Moran, government liaison for the All Hazards Forum, a partnership of mid-Atlantic states and businesses. Disasters “don?t respect boundaries.”
Interoperability ? allowing all the responders to a disaster to communicate with one another ? is a key component. Now, if a police officer from Carroll County travels to Ocean City, “you should have communication the whole way,” said John Contestabile from the Maryland Transportation Department.
“We did not have that three years ago.”
Evacuation planning has made strides as well, Contestabile said, with the Eastern Shore counties years ahead of the game.
“Ocean City?s evacuation plan is probably the most robust,” he said, with much of the traffic being directed north into Delaware.
Responding to a question about where the state expected evacuees to go, Droneburg said that families “need to establish a plan where they need to go first.” Staying with a distant relative or friend is far preferable to “sleeping on a cot in a highschool gym” for days on end, he said.
Other disasters, such as an avian flu pandemic, might require people to stay in their homes for three to five days, Droneburg said.
With this kind of “social distancing, you can top off the curve” of a pandemic, slowing its spread, said Dr. Matthew Minson, emergency planner for the state health department. “It gives us a lot of breathing room.”
With the potential for the most severe outbreak, “we?re thinking about strategies that are a little more expansive,” he said.
Other groups, such as the state animal response team, are working on ways to help people transport their animals, since in Hurricane Katrina, some victims refused to leave home without their pets.
