More than 100 volunteers and staff practiced a mass emergency medical drill today in the Genesee Community College Forum.
Called "Anthrax in Autumn," the drill was designed by the state Health Department and is designed to test the county Health Department's ability to deal with an urgent health and welfare situation affecting a large population of people.
In this case, the hypothetical scenario involved terrorists getting access to the marketing mail distribution of a large financial institution and mass mailing anthrax to population centers in credit card solicitations.
"There's a high likelihood that because anthrax has been used for a weapon before, it can be used again," said Kristine Voos, public information officer for the county Health Department.
While local officials knew a drill was coming, they were only provided with details of the scenario a week ago.
In a typical real-life situation, the county would expect to have 48 hours to set up the distribution center.
The federal government has numerous locations around the country where the antibiotics needed to treat anthrax are stored. Once a distribution of anthrax is detected, local officials begin to mobilize their resources and the feds deliver the antibiotics.
Today, the drill was about anthrax, but many of the skills and routines necessary to set up the distribution center would be used in a variety of health emergency situations.
While many of the volunteer patients today were students, members of the community were invited to participate. Upon arrival, they were registered, screened and then taken to a nurse who dispensed the medication with instructions on how it's administered.
For drill purposes, patients could pick either M&Ms or Skittles as a substitute for the antibiotics.
They were then treated to a lunch of pizza.
