Mark paused to think for a moment before responding. “I remember in Liberia that when we ran out of room, we called in refrigerated trucks. Can we do that here?”
“Honestly I have no idea, we’ve never had to implement a plan like this before. I think there’s some money in the ‘miscellaneous supplies’ category we could probably use. I could try to make that argument to the Board and PharmaStat I guess, if they ever questioned it.”
“Well, let’s do that and hope it can hold us over. Always better to beg for forgiveness than permission anyway.”
The Director agreed and rang his assistant through the phone intercom and requested the emergency vendor list ASAP. Mark used the opportunity to tell him about his troubles from earlier with trying to order more supplies. The Director shook his head. “I’ll see if I can call myself, maybe they just want to hear from someone who’s an exec. No offense. Can you get me a list of what you need?
“I had a meeting with the team earlier, and they’re getting back to me. As soon as I get it, I’ll send it over. In the meantime, we’re going to have to establish some extra isolation rooms for the critically ill patients that are already here. Let’s try not to have this new flu run over into our existing patients.”
At that moment another ER doctor walked in looking overly frazzled. “What am I supposed to do here?! The ambulances are starting to refuse patient pickups, they’re claiming that they’re not equipped to deal with this kind of infectious disease.”
The Director responded “It’s just the flu. We all know how to deal with the flu. They need to pick them up even if we don’t have anywhere at the moment to put them.”
“That’s what I said! They’re still refusing. We need help down there!” The Director called his assistant, and yelled to get the ambulance vendor on the phone. Mark took that as his cue to leave and tried to give the ER doc a reassuring smile on his way out. Once he was out of earshot, he immediately called Cal.
“Cal, I need you to have your crews clear out the construction materials in the North Wing. We need additional patient space. We don’t need all the furniture, but we do need somewhere to place beds and we need to be able to use the medi vacs and the gases on the wall. I need some telemetry up and running too, so let’s make sure we have electricity up that way.”
“No problem, Mark. Whatever you guys need.”
“Make sure your crews are in PPE. Things are getting a little dirty here. I have stuff for them, and there are several extra cases stacked there too. Make sure they put those cases in your truck. Keep that between us, ok?”
“You got it.” Cal hung up the phone and was starting to feel a little on edge, but he didn’t have too much time to think about it because his phone rang almost immediately and it was his least favorite client. “Duty calls.”
That evening, at 7pm sharp, all the group members jumped into a Skype conference call. Cal started off by saying, “Well, what’s the emergency, Mark? You sounded concerned when I talked to you earlier.”
Mark took a moment and said, “I’m not easily rattled, but the way that this went today at the EOC, and then my visit to the hospital, shows that the situation has evolved quicker than I had hoped. It’s now going to require more than just your basic preparedness. Cal, did you get the gear?”
“Yes, I got it. Thanks.”
“OK, what you should have in there is a number of Tyvek suits, nitrile gloves, rubber over-gloves, rubber over-boots, eye protection, and N95 masks. You should also have a few bottles of something called Hibiclens–that’s essentially a disinfecting solution that adheres to the skin and kills germs for up to six hours. I only had one extra case of it, so I’d recommend that on our to-get list. As a substitute, we add unscented bleach.”
Mark continued, “We’re also going to need a clean pesticide sprayer, one that’s new and hasn’t been used yet.”
Tim jumped in, “I have a brand new one, actually. It’s sitting in my garage.”
“Great, we’ll use that to mix water and bleach in proper parts so we can have a disinfecting solution.”
Glendora chimed in, “What exactly are we disinfecting and what’s going on with all this equipment?”
Mark continued, “The EOC meeting today was attended by the CDC reps from Washington. At the EOC, the PODS were there.”
“What are PODS?” Rusty asked.
“Those are the mobile units that are deployed around the county if there is a mass biological event; they are the ones that give you the antibiotics. The problem is, they don’t have any medicine to give everyone for what’s happening. They tried to conduct containment in Texas based on that outbreak we heard about yesterday, but it’s not working. People are already getting sick in major cities all over the country. The president is going to officially enact the National Pandemic Strategy tomorrow night.”
Rusty jumped in, “Now what’s THAT?”
Mark continued to explain. “Essentially, what that means is that we have a health scare so bad that we need to, as a national security precaution, enact certain protocols to prevent it from becoming a governmental collapse. At this point, I would ratchet up your hand washing a few notches, don’t go out in public anywhere you don’t need to, and if you do, carry a good quality hand sanitizer and wear a mask. Practice social distancing, don’t shake any hands, don’t kiss, don’t hug, and stay at least 3 feet away from other people’s faces. The general rule of thumb for infectious diseases is that if it’s warm and wet and not yours…don’t touch it.”
Cal said, “OK, so what about this disease specifically? They’re calling it the ‘shadow flu’ on the news. What do you know?”
“We found out that they have an idea of what it is but there seems to be uncertainty about the strain and the chain of transmission. It began as H1N2 but there seems to be a mutation underway. This is called antigenic drift and the labs haven’t yet determined what it will end up as. This makes creating a vaccine exceedingly difficult. So far, it appears to be transmitted by respiration and contact, which means if a person is contagious and touches any of the common things like doorknobs, cell phones, keyboards, toilets, or any other typical surface, the bacteria will hop on the next person that comes in contact with that item. The question of how long the microbes can survive is still unanswered. Typically, germs live on hard surfaces from a couple hours up to around 48 hours. Conversely, on soft surfaces, germs usually die in as little as 15 minutes. From what I have read on the CDC update from today, they are working under general protocols until they nail it down. Bio surveillance has been ramped up and all suspected influenza cases are now considered reportable and testing required to try to predict what strain will prevail.”
The group was starting to get uneasy with all this new information.
“The basics that the researchers are confident with, as of today, are that it incubates in 1-2 days. In days 3-7 you can be infectious but not show any symptoms. So you don’t know you have it. By days 8-15, you develop symptoms and on day 16, according to the CDC man, that’s judgement day, you either live, or you die. That’s all there is to it.”
“Well…that escalated quickly,” Rusty said.
Cal started asking some planning questions, trying to get some more details.
“Mark, what happens in a pandemic? What can we expect? How will the community react? How should we react?”
Mark replied, “Well, in a typical pandemic, people don’t immediately behave properly. They don’t follow the guidance and protocols, so that makes things worse. In a situation where you have an illness that mimics a common condition, such as the flu or the cold, a lot of people don’t take it seriously so they don’t go to the doctor, they don’t wash their hands, and they don’t keep their fingers out of their noses. Under normal conditions, the bio surveillance system in the US is designed to pick up and track severe illnesses but it requires public participation. If people hide their symptoms or don’t go to the doctor, the system does not know what’s going on. In the case of t
his particular disease, this disease masks itself as the common flu and many medical professionals might just write it off and send people home for rest and fluids. The other side of this is when people are sick, they don’t want to go to the hospital because hospitals make people sicker, especially in a public health scare. This disease is really dangerous because you’re infected and contagious within a couple of days, and you don’t even know it. This is unlike Ebola, where if you quarantine someone for 21 days you’re pretty sure they are ok, but they also had some sort of travel history that would alert you to possible exposure.” Mark took a breath and continued.
“Here, we also have the challenge of people dying at home and now we’ve got dead bodies all over the place that nobody knows about. As those bodies decompose, they are going to generate bacteria, that bacteria can turn into typhus, cholera, or any number of bad bugs.”
Charlotte broke in, “Wait, so technically any of us could be sick right now?!”
Mark said, “Yes, it’s quite possible. This brings up another important point, if you’ve been near anyone that looks remotely sick, or hasn’t felt well, speak up now.” Nobody in the group said anything, but Charlotte tried to break the tension with a bad joke.
“Well Cal, guess that counts you out for any lovin’ later… Social distancing and all.”
After a nervous chuckle, Mark said, “Actually Cal, aside from me working at the hospital you’re probably the most likely to be infected since you come into contact with so many different people every day in your crews. If anyone even hints that they might be sick or looks a little off, you should send them home immediately. Germs are germs and they spread quickly.”
Charlotte immediately started wiping everything around her with a Lysol wipe and threw a container of baby wipes at Cal’s head.
“Moving back to how a pandemic behaves, normally it goes through communities in waves. People get sick, they die, there’s a lull, and then another wave seems to come back through in 4-8 weeks. It keeps up that pattern until the pathogens burn themselves out or mutate to something different. The NPS estimates that 40% of the workforce might not be present during a major pandemic. This would lead to reduced services, resource shortages, possibly even power outages and a community might be on their own. But that’s a worst case scenario, not sure that this is that kind of pandemic, but we should plan for it just in case. The NPS also indicates that if a situation gets too bad, it makes no sense to try and contain it. Everybody will be on their own and public education would be the only thing that could help people to defend themselves.”
Cal jumped in, “I think what we need to do now is adjust our priorities since things seem to be happening faster than we thought. Glendora, how’s the food planning?”
“It’s funny you should ask. I tried to place an order for food for the cafe today, but the restaurant supply house hasn’t allowed any orders to go out. Since I can’t successfully run the cafe, I just put a sign on the door that has ‘Closed for Now’ on it. Whatever’s left in the store pantry, fridge, and freezers is for the group.”
Charlotte spoke up, “Speaking of food, I tried to place another Thrive order for some more of the staples, and absolutely everything is on backorder.”
“Maybe we should look into some livestock?” Glendora was only half joking with that suggestion.
“Well, we have snacks!” said Charlotte, holding up a ridiculously large bag of popcorn from her latest Costco raid.
Cal said, “OK, well whatever food everyone has, try to preserve it as much as possible. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Shane, since we decided that we’re going to use our house as the gathering place, can we go ahead and get a plan together for security?”
“Sure, I’ll have it together for you tomorrow. Can I swing by tomorrow morning and walk the place?”
“Sure, I’ll do it with you.” Cal switched gears to Mark and his medical recommendations. “What other supplies do we need and where can we get them?”
“We’ll need all the basic trauma gear, bandages, things like that. I’ve already got all the more advanced supplies on hand; Clara and I always try to remain stocked these days. But as for buying anything else, the hospital is having its own trouble getting supplies so I doubt much is available in the regular market. I’ll see what I can get my hands on tomorrow.”
Cal turned to Tim, “Tim, we should talk about how to generate our own electricity, and also, what are we going to do about water?”
Tim answered, “Well, I could probably put together a solar power system if I had some panels, and if I get some car or golf cart batteries, we could create a battery bank. We don’t have enough wind in this area so it’s not like we could put up a wind turbine or anything. Do you have any kind of water supply already on the property?”
“We do have a well, and the water table is only inches deep so it’s not too hard to get to, and we also have a small pond.”
“OK, that’s good. I’d also like to put together a rain harvesting system using barrels to catch the water coming off the roof. All we need are some food grade barrels, some PVC piping and some basic building materials and I can put that together in no time. I’ve seen some food grade barrels online pretty cheap. The farmers keep the chicken feed in them and then get rid of the barrels when they are empty. Not sure what supply will be like now, but I’ll take a look.”
“In order to make sure that the water is drinkable we’ll have to purify it, won’t we?” asked Rusty.
“Yeah,” said Mark. “It’s a two-step process. First we have to filter it, which removes all the chemicals and particulate contaminants and then we treat it to kill any pathogens. If there are no chemicals, we can just boil it and be good. The problem with that though, is that boiling water requires a lot of fuel. So we’ll have to find a middle ground.”
Cal said, “You know, I’ll call my fuel distributor and have him top off my large fuel storage tank out back by the workshop. That way we’ll have some fuel for the vehicles and the generators.”
Mark then decided to bring up a bigger issue. “We’re going to need some sheet plastic so that we can prepare an isolation room somewhere on the property. Just in case someone gets sick and we have to quarantine them.”
“But the good news is that they only have to be in there for 16 days!” Rusty said, with a not-so-veiled tone of doom.
“I have exactly what we need for that. I have a zip wall system. We use it when we’re painting in a building and there are people working there at the same time. It’s a set of telescoping poles that hold up plastic visqueen sheets and we have zippers that we can cut into the hanging sheets to make doors. That should work out nicely for an isolation area,” Cal offered.
“OK, we’ll need a hot room and an attached warm room, which is like a changing room. The hot room will essentially be a bedroom, so whatever goes in there, stays in there. I can probably grab some extra sheets from the hospital.” Mark made a note to run down to the supply floor when he was back at the hospital.
“OK people, sounds like we have a lot of to. Let’s reconvene tomorrow night after the Presidential address. Actually, let’s make the calls nightly from here on out, ok?” Cal said. The group agreed.
“Oh, before I forget, I think it would be a good idea if we all put together emergency kits for our vehicles. Rusty, can you dig up some information for us about what we should think about having with us just in case we get separated or break down on the road? I have some basic safety and flat tire stuff in my truck and in Charlotte’s, but I’m guessing we’ll need some more living supplies.”
Rusty answered, “Sure, no problem. There are a couple different kit ideas, a bug-out bag which we would use if we had to rush away from home and a get-home bag that we would keep with us in the car or at the office. I will email everyone a list of basic components that we should all have. Just remember that if your bag is too heavy it will not work because you will not want to carry it. I will be happy to chat with everyone to help f
ind the right things to put in the bags, just give me a call after you look at the list.”
“Oo, a car purse, I like it!” said Charlotte, trying to jab some humor back into the conversation. Cal just looked at her and gave her his best ‘I don’t even know what to do with you’ smile. It also reminded him of one more thing they might need.
“By the way, we still need to work on how we would communicate if the phones go down. Mobile and handheld HAM radios seem to be the best idea, but we still need to find a radio person because I have very little knowledge of how those things work.”
“I think I might know someone who I can ask about that,” Tim replied.
“OK great, would you mind looking into that, Tim? I would just ask you to be careful of what information you share about the group. I think we have moved beyond an open casting call for people now that we are all so invested in this thing. Part of looking out for each other is protecting each other’s privacy, too.” Cal was talking to Tim but everyone began to internalize the potential dangers of advertising too many details.
The group was coming together. Sure, they had a little ways to go but just by participating and being accepted by each other, they were growing closer. Those bonds would be challenged by what lie ahead, but for now, each of them decided to accept the little victories for what they were.
12
Chapter 12
Monday, January 8th
Del Rio, Texas
US-90 was a small, four-lane divided roadway that passed under US-277, another small divided highway that created a ring around the north side of the very small town of Del Rio, Texas. Just moments outside of Laughlin Air Force Base, it offered about as good a place as any to set up a chokepoint. Two law enforcement vehicles, one local police car, and one Texas State Patrol officer came screaming up the shoulder and pulled their vehicles to a stop in the roadway with their flashing lights on, blocking the paths of anyone trying to pass in or out of town. Several confused civilian drivers and a taxi load of Air Force trainees stopped and waited to see what the police were up to. After a few minutes of no activity, the grumbling civilians turned around with the intention of going another way.
The Unraveling: Book 1 of the Bound to Survive Series Page 11