In disaster drill, King County tries out temporary hospital

During the December 2006 windstorm that left much of the Puget Sound region without power for days, King County public-health officials scrambled to draft a disaster response.

They eventually opened a temporary shelter at Bellevue Community College, caring for four dozen nursing-home evacuees and other residents on bare cots borrowed from the American Red Cross.

On Tuesday, health officials showed the progress they've made since then.

In what was billed as one of the first drills of its kind in the nation, Public Health — Seattle & King County and dozens of local groups turned an exhibition hall at Seattle Center into an emergency health-care center. It's one of three sites in King County that would handle an overflow of hospital patients in the event of earthquakes, a pandemic flu, bioterrorism or other disasters.

More than 300 staffers and volunteers took part in the $100,000 exercise. The Seattle Center Exhibition Hall — along with the adjacent opera house at McCaw Hall — can hold 250 cots. The site is equipped to provide portable oxygen and IV drips, among other services.

Officials are negotiating for two more sites, at Renton Community Center and Bellevue Community College, to bring total capacity to 750 beds.

That's a fraction of the almost 60,000 King County residents who might have to be hospitalized during a severe influenza pandemic. Even a more moderate outbreak is projected to lead to 5,200 hospitalizations — surpassing the number of hospital beds in the county by at least 1,200.

If the virus behind the epidemic of bird flu in Asia and Europe becomes easily transmittable among humans, caring for infected or exposed persons largely "will be up to their families," said Michael Loehr, manager of emergency preparedness for Public Health.

Dr. Lewis Rubinson, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington, said King County is better braced for a flu pandemic than most localities. An outbreak in the U.S. could sicken 90 million Americans, or almost a third of the population, and kill between 200,000 and 2 million people.

King County now has enough doses of the antiviral drug Tamiflu to treat 25 percent of county residents, Rubinson said. Tamiflu is expected to alleviate symptoms but not cure or prevent the flu.

Rubinson said a critical part of disaster planning is setting a clear chain of command. The final authority on health-related matters would be Dr. David Fleming, director of public health in the county. It would be his call whether to close schools and day-care centers in a pandemic outbreak.

Kyung Song: 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes.com