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Comal County to Get Residents Prepared For The Plague

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On Friday, Comal County will hold plague outbreak drills for residents.

From Texas Standard: Imagine you turn on the radio one day and you hear a sound like that emergency broadcast signal. Only this time, the announcer does not say "This is only a test."

Then the sound disappears and you hear an official-sounding voice, saying something like "This is a civil health emergency. Residents of Comal County are advised to report immediately to the interstate frontage road for emergency supplies and medication. Drive. Do not walk."

To be clear, this is an imagined scenario. But if officials get it right, the scene in Comal County will look that way Friday morning along the north side of the interstate frontage road in New Braunfels. The county is staging an exercise to test how people would respond in the event of an outbreak of the plague.

Chris Washington is Comal County's emergency preparedness coordinator. He says in an ideal situation, there will be a line of participants in the cars waiting to receive an emergency scenario.

A scenario might look like this, Washington says: "You're John Doe, 32 years old, and you're allergic to a specific antibiotic."

Next, participants in the drill would drive through the line. "You would hand your paperwork to someone at a dispensing station," he says. "You would be handed your medication and then – in an ideal situation – you would be out and go to your home to be with your loved ones."

Read more on Texas Standard.

Texas Standard reporter Joy Diaz has amassed a lengthy and highly recognized body of work in public media reporting. Prior to joining Texas Standard, Joy was a reporter with Austin NPR station KUT on and off since 2005. There, she covered city news and politics, education, healthcare and immigration.
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