Washington state one of the best in response to disasters

Washington is one of the top three states in the nation in its ability to respond to disasters such as floods, chemical spills and outbreaks of communicable disease or food poisoning, but gains made over a decade are now in jeopardy because of budget cuts, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The report, "Ready or Not? Protecting the Public from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism," is the eighth annual look at states' emergency preparedness, produced by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Washington, Arkansas and North Dakota were the top-scoring states, measured in such areas as foodborne-disease detection and reporting capabilities, electronic surveillance of public-health problems and various measures of drills and exercises.

The survey also looked at whether a state required all licensed child-care facilities to have a multihazard evacuation and relocation plan and whether its public health labs had enough workers to work 12-hour days, five days a week for six to eight weeks to respond to an infectious disease outbreak, such as a pandemic flu.

Washington state scored 10 out of 10, and local emergency planners said it took a lot of time and energy to get there. Last year, the state met just 6 of 10 measures.

Peggi Shapiro, director of disaster readiness for the Washington State Hospital Association, said her organization and the state's Department of Health have worked hard for a decade to build collaboration and coordination among health-care entities, including not only hospitals, community health centers and public health but fire departments, the military, blood centers and others.

"We have developed strategies, exercised them, discussed what didn't work, re-strategized, re-exercised, et cetera," Shapiro said, and planners worked overtime to create systems so that health-care providers and communities could cope with any type of emergency.

Mary Selecky, secretary of the state Department of Health, noted that Washington has had "real-life experiences" ranging from last year's H1N1 flu to floods and instances of mad-cow disease. "If anything, this shows that the 10-year investment pays off," she said.

She said she plans to remind state lawmakers, faced with the need for drastic budget cuts for the next biennium, that both local and statewide public-health agencies are essential for everyday public-health work, "let alone for emergencies." The state health department is responsible for distributing emergency stockpiles of vaccine and running the labs that identify outbreaks of communicable disease.

Overall, the report said, the country is in much better shape to respond to public-health emergencies than it was in 2001 when it experienced both the New York terrorism attack and anthrax tragedies. Afterward, significant progress was made in the country's ability to respond to a range of events, including not only bioterrorism, but food-borne illnesses and natural disasters such as E. coli and salmonella outbreaks, oil spills, ice storms, mudslides, tornadoes, floods, and pandemic flus.

But the report also said that cuts in public-health funding by federal, state and local governments threaten the gains made since 2001. "The economic climate change has led to cuts in public-health staffing and basic capabilities, which are needed to successfully respond to crises," the report notes.

There remain large gaps and "ongoing vulnerabilities" in the country's response capability, the report says, including the lack of an integrated national approach to "biosurveillance" for not only bioterrorism but outbreaks of disease or food-borne contamination. Other gaps include a shortage of trained public-health workers and funded positions, outdated vaccine development and manufacturing, and the ability of the medical system to suddenly care for a massive influx of patients.

Jeff Levi, the executive director of the Trust For America's Health, wrote in the report that the recession was taking a serious toll on states' disaster planning. "There is an emergency for emergency health preparedness in the United States."

Carol M. Ostrom: 206-464-2249 or costrom@seattletimes.com