The typical preparedness drill in Delaware County, Ohio, draws about 20 volunteers, mostly high school juniors and seniors planning to become firefighters. But when local government agencies put out a call for zombies, more than 10 times that number pitched in to be “victims” in a mock hazardous materials exercise.
Participants wore gruesome makeup and crowded inside the stadium of Ohio Wesleyan University, giving first responders a chance to assess and decontaminate them with water sprayed from a fire hose that was suspended from a 25-foot crane. Instead of administering antibiotics as might be done in the case of something like exposure to anthrax, public health nurses treated the decontaminated zombies with Skittles and M&Ms.
Delaware County, Ohio, Health Commissioner Frances Veverka, MPH, RS, checks her clipboard as the zombie exercise gets under way.
Photo courtesy Delaware, Ohio, General Health District
“I think everybody agrees that we learned from this,” Fran Ververka, health commissioner for the Delaware County Health District, told The Nation’s Health. “Over 120 first responders were there. We had over 240 people participate as zombies. So it was extremely well-received as far as a preparedness exercise.”
The idea for the drill came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s popular zombie preparedness website, a trove of real-life preparedness information that was spawned by a playful blog post last spring. Written by U.S. Assistant Surgeon General Ali Khan, the well-received post included a Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness Guide that encouraged people to put together an emergency kit and emergency plan in the unlikely event of a zombie infestation.
Apparently, zombies are popular in the Delaware County area.
“We were trying to think of a way to get more volunteers to show up, and that’s a hard thing to do,” Brian Galligher, head of the Delaware County Emergency Management Agency, told The Nation’s Health.
When he visited CDC’s zombie preparedness website, “it just kind of clicked.”
Local fire chiefs and the emergency planning committee liked the idea. Soon, staff members from scores of agencies were collaborating for a Halloween zombie drill.
“I made my husband be a zombie,” said Ververka, who pointed out that agency leaders were on hand, but front-line responders were the people running the mass casualty drill.
Volunteers came from as far as 100 miles to participate, and “they really seemed to enjoy meeting with each other,” she said.
To recruit volunteers, the Emergency Management Agency set up a website for pre-registration that gave detailed instructions and a release form. Zombies had to be at least 8 years old and were asked to arrive early if they needed help with makeup. Before the exercise, county officials held a costume, makeup and “best zombie walk” contest.
Even some responders were turned into zombies if they failed to wear the proper hazardous material protective equipment and came into close contact with a zombie volunteer.
In the county of about 180,000 residents, six public information officers reached out to local media for help publicizing the event, and local agencies also distributed posters to fire departments that held open houses prior to Halloween. All told, the exercise involved 10 fire departments, a local hospital, the sheriff’s and police departments, emergency management services, the health district and emergency management agency, a volunteer search and rescue group and volunteer amateur radio group and Ohio Wesleyan University. The Delaware County Local Emergency Planning Committee sponsored “Zombie Crisis” T-shirts for each volunteer.
Above, a zombie bride and groom take first place in the zombie preparedness costume contest held prior to the start of the Oct. 31 drill.
Photo courtesy Delaware, Ohio, General Health District
CDC officials said zombie fever does not appear to be waning. As of mid-November there had been 70,000 views on the graphic novel called “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic,” and the agency had distributed 18,000 zombie preparedness posters to dozens of health departments. Those posters feature ghoulish eyes peering out over the words “Get a Kit. Make a Plan. Be Prepared.”
View the CDC zombie preparedness materials at http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies.asp.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
