oversold rebound starting!!!!!, page-19

re: oversold rebound starting!!!chart Some thing of interest
5:55pm (UK)
Emergency Planning Reaches All-Time High

By Alan Erwin, PA News


Emergency planning to fight the threat from world terrorism and global epidemics has reached an all-time high, disaster experts claimed tonight.

Amid heightened risk of biological attack or sweeping epidemics, specialists told of an intense new effort to control any outbreaks.

Bruce Farr, the Toronto emergency medical services chief who battled against the deadly SARS virus, stressed how countries cannot afford to be exposed.

He said: “We don’t know what is lurking around the corner and we need to be better prepared.

“More than the threat has increased. We are more sophisticated and our plans have to continue and respond to the needs of our communities.”

Mr Farr arrived in Belfast for a major conference held by the Emergency Planning Society.

Delegates from New York, Canada and Australia will be discussing ways to cope with a natural disaster or terrorism during the three-day event at the city’s Waterfront Hall.

The 56-year-old former paramedic was in charge when the SARS crisis hit Toronto’s health care system last year.

Over a devastating three-month period 44 people died and another 200 cases were reported as the city battled against the disease’s spread.

With a third of Toronto’s 15 hospitals shut down and 400 paramedics quarantined before it was wiped out, Mr Farr will tell colleagues how to cope in a similar break out.

“There are concerns about other things such as different biological and chemical outbreaks that can have an impact on the community,” he said.

“That’s the kind of thing everyone, even here in Ireland, has to plan for.”

He added: “We are in an age of information. We have all these potential threats but we are also living in a very fast paced society.

“Who would have thought a tanker-load of chemicals would have been an issue 20 years ago, but today that’s a very real concern.”