Some folks might say a year’s worth of planning to handle the massive influx of tourists during the August 21 eclipse turned into a great big nothing.
But that’s really the point. After health and emergency officials from the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Office of Emergency Management spent months spearheading efforts to bulk up on health resources, spread information and create a communications network with rural hospitals and clinics, the event carried on with little if any hitch. And that kind of nothing is exactly what Richard Leman, a public health physician with OHA, was hoping for.
“What I have to say to that is ‘whew,’” Leman said. “We are encouraged by what we’ve seen so far. I think at this point we’re happy.”
Planners at OEM and OHA anticipated a million visitors to crowd into the state for the event. There’s no real way to tell if that many people actually came or if it was fewer, because the state doesn’t track those sorts of statistics. Oregon’s beach communities saw far fewer visitors than anticipated, but many towns and parks were jam packed.
There were also no reports of eclipse-related deaths or injuries, although a handful of festival goers at one Central Oregon event were airlifted to hospitals for drug overdoses or injuries.
“We saw increases in the number of patients in some areas, but happily we didn’t have any major incidents,” Leman said. “We anticipated what would happen and things came out well.”
Salem Health saw a minor spike in in-patient admissions, but it wasn’t particularly dramatic, said Wayne McFarlin, Salem Health’s emergency preparedness administrator.
“During the eclipse weekend, Salem Health saw a 13 percent increase in inpatient census over the previous four weeks and the emergency department saw a 17 percent increase in visits over the previous four weeks,” McFarlin said. “Although detailed information is not known on whether these increases are local or visitor based, anecdotal observations confirm a number of out of state patients were seen.”
Patient Volume Went Down at St. Charles
Lisa Goodman, a spokeswoman for St. Charles Health System, said patient traffic was actually pretty slow during the eclipse, likely because of pre-planning efforts.
"Overall our patient volume was down, but that was due in part to the fact that we created capacity in our system by cancelling elective surgeries during that timeframe," Goodman said.
"Our emergency departments were busy, but not unusually so. The increase in hospital utilization didn't come to fruition at the levels we expected."
American Medical Response, which had 23 ambulances and 46 paramedics and EMTs mobilized to help out, ended up sending most of its staff home on August 22 because they were no longer needed. Officials had anticipated the need for the ambulances throughout the week.
“Fortunately, months of planning for the event paid off,” the company said in a news release. “Oregon was able to get the word out: People arrived early, had very little trouble getting to their eclipse viewing spots - and overall had an excellent experience. AMR worked with our county, state and federal partners to make sure communities had resources available.”
In the planning stages, officials looked at a variety of potential threats to human health - including heat-related illnesses, fire and smoke exposure, the need for protective eyewear, the potential for foodborne disease outbreaks, and potable water and sanitation issues.
“In public health this is what we do to prevent illness and injury,” Leman said. “There were a lot of possible things here that we focused on. We were keeping an eye out for any health issues that could emerge. With fires there can be problems with air quality, as well, but we seem to have come through it OK.”
OHA and OEM officials also set up a website with health information for the eclipse, created brochures with safety and other tips and built a communications network between the agencies, rural hospitals and other emergency services, said Jamie Bash, an OHA risk communications analyst.
“We spent time talking to health advisors, and we helped develop messaging,” Bash said. “We helped coordinate and fine tune that messaging. And we worked with partners to find different channels to get the information out. ODOT was especially great with that.”
The Oregon Department of Transportation shared information from the website and brochures on its social media platforms, which was a big help in getting the message out, she added.
A burn ban by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department likely also helped prevent any significant fires from breaking out, along with media blasts underlining the fire danger, Bash said.
Possibility of Foodborne or Waterborne Disease Outbreaks
The one big remaining data point is the potential for foodborne or waterborne disease outbreaks, because those problems tend to take a few weeks to appear, Leman said.
“We usually know about that fairly soon, and we’ll be watching for evidence of outbreaks of illness,” Leman said.
Overall though, the event was a huge success for Oregon’s healthcare community, Leman said.
“Some of this may have been luck,” Leman said. “But part of it was because of good planning at the local levels. And also people just did things right.”
That’s something McFarlin agrees with.
“This experience underscored the importance of working as a team with all involved community stakeholders, other hospitals, police, fire, EMS, etc., to effectively meet this regional challenge,” McFarlin said.
And the plans and communications networks created for the event will continue to be useful in the future, both for disaster planning for the big Cascadia earthquake and for future events, Bash said.
“We hope we never have that (Cascadia earthquake), but this kind of work and the bridges that we’ve built - I think it’s better than any exercise could be,” Bash said. “And I think it paid off.”
Sue can be reached at [email protected].
