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Suggested Citation:"Section 1. Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. A Guide to Emergency Quarantine and Isolation Controls of Roads in Rural Areas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23078.
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Page 1
Page 2
Suggested Citation:"Section 1. Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. A Guide to Emergency Quarantine and Isolation Controls of Roads in Rural Areas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23078.
×
Page 2
Page 3
Suggested Citation:"Section 1. Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. A Guide to Emergency Quarantine and Isolation Controls of Roads in Rural Areas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23078.
×
Page 3
Page 4
Suggested Citation:"Section 1. Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. A Guide to Emergency Quarantine and Isolation Controls of Roads in Rural Areas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23078.
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Page 4

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Section 1. Introduction 1.1 Background There are new concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. agriculture to the deliberate introduction of animal and plant diseases (referred to as agroterrorism), detailed by the Homeland-Security-Council-led interagency working group in several of the national planning scenarios laid out in Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-8 National Preparedness. Transportation and law enforcement agencies are being called on to prepare for their roles in the National Incident Management System (NIMS), which provides “a consistent nationwide approach for federal, state, tribal, and local governments to work effectively and efficiently together to prepare for, prevent, respond to, and recover from domestic incidents, regardless of cause, size, or complexity.” Response to agricultural emergencies whether attributed to agroterrorism or naturally occurring outbreaks of food contamination or animal disease often requires immediate (within hours) isolation and/or quarantine of potential infection or contamination areas. Research indicates that the economic impact of the outbreak is a function of the time it takes to enforce quarantine and eradicate or control the infection. It is essential that emergency quarantine and isolation control guidelines and procedures be available that can be implemented immediately at the local level. Traditional methods of containment (i.e., posting law enforcement officers to control travel) are not feasible in many potentially affected areas; thus, more innovative methods are needed that can be implemented in partnership with law enforcement, military (Active, Reserve, and Guard), the private sector, transportation agencies, media outlets, and others at the local and state levels. Quarantine or isolation of even a limited area could involve many roads and could need to be in place for weeks to months. While federal support for the longer duration may arrive in a few days, vector control (i.e., containment of damages) requires an effective locally implemented response within hours. There is a need to develop or identify appropriate emergency quarantine and isolation controls for road networks (e.g., all roads in a 3- to 6-mile (5- to 10-km) radius of a feed lot) in a short time frame (e.g., 6 to 12 hours). Although a typical state DOT usually has on hand enough signs and barricades to close and detour one route in a county, it would be hard pressed to close two or three roads in the same county. It is doubtful that any county has enough signs and barricades to restrict or control traffic on all county roads in a 3- to 6-mile (5- to 10-km) radius quarantine area. 1

1.2 Research Objective and Scope The objective of this research is to establish recommended practices and procedures associated with traffic control on local and state roads during agricultural emergencies. The research will focus on quarantine and isolation controls that are related to identified containment areas and need to be established within a suitable time frame. There is a need to be able to implement recommendations with minimal resources typical for a rural region. This project is primarily concerned with agricultural emergencies, such as outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, highly pathogenic avian influenza, or plant rusts where a rural county does not have the law-enforcement resources to respond quickly. 1.3 Research Approach The project began with a thorough review of the literature, including national, state, and local response plans for agricultural emergencies, response training exercises and reports, and emergency traffic control guidelines. State and local emergency response agencies, departments of agriculture, law enforcement, and highway officials from several states were contacted to determine the types and levels of agricultural emergency response planning and training that are taking place, as well as the agencies’ planning, training and resource needs. After compiling the information from the literature in an annotated bibliography and detailing the information discovered through the state and local contacts, the important concepts were analyzed and summarized in a brief description of the lessons learned from the literature and state and local contacts. A taxonomy of agricultural emergency response policies and procedures was then developed to capture the phases, timeline, and roles and responsibilities of the different agencies involved in the response as we understood it from the lessons learned. The annotated bibliography, lessons learned and taxonomy, combined with the research team’s expertise in traffic control, were then used to develop a draft guide to traffic control for an agricultural emergency, which provided a method for setting up traffic stops, road blocks and cleaning and disinfection stations. The guide included traffic control diagrams, a hypothetical agricultural emergency scenario to be used as a planning exercise, as well as planning information such as establishing a command structure, a communication plan, a resource list, and emergency compact agreements with other jurisdictions specific to an agricultural emergency response. The draft guide was presented in a series of one-day workshops to state and county officials, including representatives from the department of agriculture and the department of transportation, veterinarians, county emergency managers, county sheriffs and deputies, city police, and city and county public works officials, in four states. Workshop participants were invited to review the guide and provide the research team with feedback on how applicable they found the guide for their communities, such as how useful the different sections of the guide were, what was not included but would have been helpful, suggestions for different ways of presenting the information, and if anything was misleading, confusing, or 2

contradictory to their existing emergency response plans. The feedback from the workshop was combined with feedback from other federal, state, and local officials who were given the guide for review, and a revised guide was developed. Finally, the results of the literature review, the information gathered through state and local contacts, the lessons learned, the taxonomy, and the traffic control guidelines developed for an agricultural emergency response, were compiled into this final report. 1.4 Organization of This Report This final report presents an overview of the work conducted in the research. The final guide developed during the research and the project presentation used in the Task 7 workshops are presented in the appendices to this report. The sections of the report that follow are briefly described here. Section 2 of this report is an annotated bibliography, citing and describing a variety of articles, reports, and emergency response plans found during the literature review. While very little information was found on traffic control procedures, the literature provided useful information for understanding the plant and animal diseases likely to be introduced, the level of economic harm caused by an outbreak, the timeline of the spread of the disease and the level of response required to contain and eradicate the disease. Section 3 provides a summary of the information gathered from interviews with state and local officials involved in agricultural emergency response. It also includes a brief discussion of an agroterrorism response planning session. Section 4 describes the lessons learned from the case studies, the literature review, and phone interviews with state and local officials. Information was gathered not only on how previous cases were handled, but also on the level of state and local preparedness. Section 5 discuss the development of the guide and provides a taxonomy of the existing general procedures for handling an agricultural emergency including incident response command structure, emergency mutual aid compacts, levels of control, prioritization of routes, enforcement, and traffic control layouts. Section 6 details the review of the guide by state and local officials, including the one-day workshops in four rural counties. The Appendix presents the project presentation that was used to present the project, as well as basic emergency traffic control procedures, during the four one-day workshops. This presentation may also be used to present the project and to introduce the Guide to agencies that are interested in developing a traffic control plan for an agricultural emergency. 3

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TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Web-Only Document 130 is an annotated bibliography that reviews several state emergency response plans associated with traffic control of rural roads in an agricultural emergency. The material contained in Web-Only Document 130 was used to help produce NCHRP Report 525, Vol. 13: A Guide to Traffic Control of Rural Roads in an Agricultural Emergency, which explores recommended practices and procedures associated with traffic control on local and state roads during agricultural emergencies.

NCHRP Report 525: Surface Transportation Security is a series in which relevant information is assembled into single, concise volumes—each pertaining to a specific security problem and closely related issues. The volumes focus on the concerns that transportation agencies are addressing when developing programs in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the anthrax attacks that followed. Future volumes of the report will be issued as they are completed.

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