this pressed for your right to know: I’m a Hazmat-Trained Hospital Worker: Here’s What No One Is Telling You About Ebola | Alternet

I’m a Hazmat-Trained Hospital Worker: Here’s What No One Is Telling You About Ebola | Alternet.

 

October 18, 2014  |  

 “Ebola is brilliant.”

It is a superior virus that has evolved and fine-tuned its mechanism of transmission to be near-perfect. That’s why we’re all so terrified. We know we can’t destroy it. All we can do is try to divert it, outrun it. 

I’ve worked in health care for a few years now. One of the first

Cover of The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story

things I took advantage of was training to become FEMA-certified for hazmat ops in a hospital setting. My rationale for this was that, in my home state of Maine, natural disasters are almost a given. We’re also, though you may not know it, a state that has many major ports that receive hazardous liquids from ships and transport them inland. In the back of my mind, of course, I was aware that any hospital in the world could potentially find itself at

the epicenter of a scene from The Hot Zone. That was several years ago. Today I’m thinking, by God, I might actually have to use this training. Mostly, though, I’m aware of just that — that I did receive training. Lots of it.

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today’s holiday: Hurricane Supplication Day

Hurricane Supplication Day

Observed in the U.S. Virgin Islands—St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John—Hurricane Supplication Day marks the beginning of the hurricane season. Special church services are held to pray for safety from the storms that ravage these and other Caribbean islands. The custom probably dates back to the “rogation” ceremonies (from the word rogare, meaning “to beg or supplicate”), which began in fifth-century England. Rogations usually followed a frightening series of storms, earthquakes, or other natural disasters. More… Discuss

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This Day in the Yesteryear: GREAT LAKES STORM REACHES PEAK FEROCITY (1913)

Great Lakes Storm Reaches Peak Ferocity (1913)

The deadliest and most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the Great Lakes region, the “Big Blow,” “Freshwater Fury,” or “White Hurricane,” as it is variously known, was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that battered parts of the US and Canada for several days in November 1913. Approximately 250 people died in the violent storm—all of them sailors who perished when their ships were wrecked or sunk on the lakes. How tall were the swells that vessels had to contend with during the storm? More… Discuss