CSULB has plan too!

Campus emergency plan isn't for the birds
Jonathan Oyama
Issue date: 4/10/07 Section: News



There is an emergency plan for Cal State Long Beach students should there be an avian flu outbreak, said a representative of the Housing & Residential Life office Monday.

Although the avian flu has not yet been carried over into the United States, as was predicted would happen in October of last year, there have been more than 200 reported cases of the avian flu in Asia from 1997 to 2006.

Director of Housing & Residential Life Stan Olin said that Maryann Rozanski, director of Safety, Risk Management and Information Security, was involved in the planning in case the avian flu spreads to CSULB.

According to Olin, Rozanski was the representative in a task force meeting at the CSU system Chancellor's Office. In the meeting, Rozanski and other representatives of the CSU system discussed what to do in case an avian flu outbreak occurs.

"CSU as a whole was trying very hard not to ignore this," Olin said. "What they had done essentially was set up lines of communication and some scenarios of what we could do if [an avian flu outbreak occurs]."

Olin said that if the avian flu spreads to the CSULB campus, the university's Emergency Operations Center has a response team that would handle the campus in case of a disaster and form a plan. University Police Chief Jack Pearson would head the center.

The Emergency Operations Center's plan states that if a disaster occurred, Pearson or his designee, Sgt. Scott Brown, would be responsible for activating the Emergency Operations Center. He would then ask the incident commander, CSULB President F. King Alexander, to start the plan.

Olin also said that one of the most difficult aspects of planning in case of a future disaster is that no one can predict what will actually happen in an emergency situation.

"If something bad happens, what we don't know is which people are going to get sick, who's not going to be here, how many people are going to be sick," Olin said. "So you have a little trouble making exact plans."

The avian influenza virus is found in wild birds' intestines and is very contagious among birds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Web site. The virus is spread through infected birds' saliva, nasal secretions and feces.

The CDC Web site also states that symptoms of avian influenza include typical symptoms of the flu, as well as eye infection, pneumonia, severe respiratory disease and other severe and life-threatening conditions.

However, Health Resource Center Coordinator Nop Ratanasiripong said that it is very unlikely that the avian flu would spread from Asia to Long Beach.

"It will be very unlikely, because…we have a very good prevention plan with the department of health of Long Beach," Ratanasiripong said. "The poultry industry is also very careful on [handling] poultry products like chickens, ducks and those kinds of things."

Ratanasiripong said that the FDA has regulations for foods imported into the United States and that the food is tested carefully.