Silver Dragon III Drill is Scheduled for March 11, 2009

On March 11, 2009, as part of the San Mateo County Health System’s “Silver Dragon III” emergency drill, Foster City and Belmont-San Carlos Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) will go door‑to-door in Foster City delivering earthquake preparedness information from 9 a.m. until noon.

In Foster City, CERT teams will canvass areas in Neighborhoods 4, 5, 6 and 7, near the Foster City lagoon, Beach Park Boulevard, Marlin Street, Catamaran Street and portions of Shell Boulevard and Edgewater Boulevard. Redwood City CERT Teams, which are closely coordinating with Foster City and Belmont-San Carlos Teams, will canvass an area of Redwood Shores.

The exercise will test the ability of the Health System to work with local cities, law enforcement, fire departments, Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) and CERT teams to distribute large quantities of medicine and medical supplies from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Strategic National Stockpile (SNS).

CERT and SMC MRC volunteers throughout the county will practice their readiness to provide emergency assistance, specifically in the event of a major health emergency such as Pandemic Influenza, a food or water-borne illness, or an intentional release of a bio agent. In order to test door-to-door distribution as realistically as possible, CERT and MRC teams will be distributing earthquake preparedness brochures to simulate the medicine that could be delivered following a health-related emergency involving large segments of the population.

The San Mateo County Health System organized similar exercises in 2007 and 2008. For Silver Dragon I, the fixed target was to hit 1300 households with time as the variable. For Silver Dragon II, the time was fixed at 3 hours and the variable was the number of households reached in that time frame. Silver Dragon III will follow the same method as Silver Dragon II.

In addition to testing the Health System’s ability to distribute medications, this exercise will test San Mateo County’s existing plans to receive SNS medicine and medical supplies as quickly as possible. The SNS will be deployed in the event of a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out. Once Federal and local authorities agree that the SNS is needed, medicines can be delivered to any state in the U.S. within 12 hours. While waiting for the SNS shipment to arrive, San Mateo County is prepared to distribute medicine and supplies from its own pharmaceutical stockpile.

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Additional Information

Strategic National Stockpile (SNS): www.bt.cdc.gov/stockpile/index.asp

Foster City CERT Team: www.fostercitycert.org

San Mateo County’s Community Alert System, (SMC Alert): www.smcalert.info