ENGAGING CITY, TOWN, COUNTY, STATE & FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
IN PLANNING FOR AN ANIMAL DISEASE EMERGENCY

In 2006 over 170 city, town, county, state and federal officials gained a better appreciation of the cross jurisdictional coordination and planning that needs to be done to prepare for and react to an animal disease emergency. After a general education program on animal diseases that may require a cross-jurisdictional emergency response and how that response would be handled, this agent led fifty city, town, county, state and federal officials in Lincoln and Marathon Counties going through the process of identifying areas where cross-jurisdictional cooperation needs to be improved. The work of the Agricultural Development Agent to bring together state and federal expertise to help the communities better prepare themselves for an agricultural emergency began as a result of a training that was done at the 2005 ANRE conference. After that conference Lincoln and Marathon County Emergency Management Directors were contacted and a local team was established to begin planning a series of educational efforts for 2006.

On April 10th the Lincoln and Marathon County Emergency Management Offices and Extension, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection (WDATCP) Emergency Planning staff, and USDA-Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) veterinarians held a seminar at the UW-Marathon County campus for local emergency service providers on “Responding to and Animal Disease Emergency”. Although we only had 18 people attend we did have a good cross-section of local officials and responders from both counties. The seminar evaluations were very positive and we were able to get some very good information to develop a more formal training exercise on June 13th. At the June 13th workshop thirty-two people representing town and county government, sheriff and police departments, state patrol and a variety of state, county and federal agencies were led through a table top exercise by myself, a staff member from the WDATCP Emergency Planning Team and a USDA-APHIS veterinarian. The topic for the table top exercise was a fictional Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in an area that would affect both counties and the cities of Wausau and Merrill. This stimulated quite a bit of discussion on what resources would be needed to handle the situation. And although both counties have considerable resources available, it was obvious that more planning needs to be done in order to have those resources readily available in response to a disaster.

The workshop also provided us with some ideas on how to expand the educational effort. As a result of the workshops, the agent was asked by Rick Stadelman, the Wisconsin Towns Association (WTA) Executive Secretary, to present our work at the WTA Annual Convention on October 17th. At the October 17th conference this agent teamed up with the area USDA-APHIS veterinarian to present the work we had done locally and facilitated a discussion among participants about what informational resources the State of Wisconsin and WTA could provide its members. As a result of this program the WTA has drafted a paper on a town’s responsibility in planning and reacting to an agricultural emergency and they have also added information on emergency planning to their website and included it in area meeting presentations.

Tom Cadwallader, Agricultural Development Agent - 2006 Success Story

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