MANHATTAN — A Kansas State University center is offering training to help local and state emergency responders prepare for something they hope never happens: a serious animal disease outbreak.

The National Agricultural Biosecurity Center conducted six animal disease response training sessions in Nebraska in April and is offering two sessions in Kansas in May. The training will be offered in Manhattan on May 9 and in Ottawa on May 11. Registration is available at k-state.edu/nabc/nkrhsc.html. Each one-day session is an awareness-level course designed to cover many aspects of foreign animal disease response, including biosecurity, quarantine, cleaning and disinfection, depopulation and disposal, and proper use of personal protective equipment.

The training targets nontraditional agricultural first responders such as firefighters, public health officials, law enforcement and emergency medical technicians as well as veterinarians and others. Bringing many professions together helps individuals better understand their roles in the response to an animal disease outbreak, said Ken Burton, program director at the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center.

“A lot of the traditional human response personnel don’t recognize their potential role in a high-consequence animal disease outbreak,” Burton said. “They feel they wouldn’t be involved, but the idea behind the class is to make people understand it doesn’t matter what your role in the community — what your day job might be — the whole community is going to be involved in responding to and be affected by an animal disease outbreak.”

Chelsea Kramer, emergency response coordinator for the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, attended all six training sessions and said she would like to see more animal disease response training in Nebraska.

“The training gives nontraditional responders an opportunity to see the response as a whole so when they are asked to set up roadblocks or do traffic control or other pieces, they know why they are being asked — they know what the purpose is,” Kramer said.

Kramer said robust response plans are important.

“In Nebraska, our state’s economy is driven by agriculture,” Kramer said. “To protect Nebraskans’ way of life, we need to respond to emergencies in a timely and effective manner.”

Animal disease response training is designed within the Incident Command System framework and is listed in the Federal Emergency Management Agency state and federal catalog. Emergency responders and veterinarians who complete the course will be eligible for continuing education credit.

The training includes presentations, and then concludes with a tabletop exercise during which individuals consider their responses to a scenario and then discuss how they would work together. Burton said responses to the training have been favorable.

“The scope, size and overall effect of an animal disease outbreak are eye-opening,” he said. “Law enforcement realizes it’s so much bigger than just a checkpoint. The comments are almost all positive.”

The National Agricultural Biosecurity Center is working to schedule animal disease response training sessions in northwest and southwest Kansas later this year.

Flex Air is hosting an Aviation Career Day on Saturday, April 29th at Manhattan Regional Airport.

Charles Copeland, Chief Pilot for Flex Air said the event is open to high school sophomores, juniors and seniors.

“Between 10:00 am and 2:30 pm we’re putting on a full career day; for the first 100 students [that sign up] we’re going to be giving free flights,” said Copeland.

There are still approximately 15 open slots for those free flights. Copeland said that the day is really about promoting the aviation industry for the students that have a genuine interest.

“K-State’s professional pilot program will be showing off one of their aircraft, and we’ll also have the unmanned aircraft systems coming out,” said Copeland. “I’m pretty excited about [the unmanned aircraft systems] because I don’t think a lot of people know that it even exists, it’s not just a military thing; especially in our area, agriculture is going to be heavily dependent on drones for checking crops and doing things that we don’t need to be doing with manual labor.”

There will also be control tower tours, fire station tours and several airplanes on display.

Copeland said that with the looming retirement of the baby boomer generation, now is the time for young people to dive into aviation.

“Delta [Airlines] is hiring 1600 pilots a year, and that’s just an astronomical number – the entire pilot industry is only half a million pilots across the United States and that includes general aviation, that’s not just airlines” said Copeland. “[Pilots] can not fly for an airline after age 65, so if you look at the large number of baby boomers that are pilots they are forced aged retiring.”

Copeland noted that three years ago the age limit for pilots was 60 and it was extended to 65 due to the number of pilots that would be forced to retire far outweighing the number of entry level pilots available in the industry.

Aviation Career Day is Saturday from 10:00 until 2:00 pm at the Manhattan Regional Airport.

To register for the event visit https://goflexair.com/signup.

For more information, call 785-320-1218.

*feature photo courtesy Fly MHK

Principles of Community are for all of us

By President Richard Myers from statement in K-State Today

 

On Monday, we saw another example of how those who harbor prejudice attempt to create rifts within the K-State family. In this case, a poster with an anti-Semitic message was taped to a utility pole near Ahearn Field House. This type of message is unwelcome at Kansas State University.

There have been a series of random messages found on campus in recent weeks, small in number but each targeting a specific group of the K-State family. Our LGBTQ community was disparaged in one single-page flyer, our African-American family members targeted in another. These few, random incidents should be kept in perspective. The K-State family is committed to diversity and inclusion and should not be influenced by these isolated incidents. We don’t know who has distributed these missives, or why. But we do know they don’t represent the values of the K-State family.

Our Principles of Community affirm the right of freedom of expression, but we call on each other to maintain civility and respect. The tone of these messages does not honor these principles. This is not the Wildcat Way. We welcome and embrace those who bring diverse backgrounds, thoughts and opinions to our university.

Richard B. Myers
President
Kansas State University

 

 

TODAY
20%	High	60°	Patchy frost in the morning. Mostly sunny in the morning, then mostly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of rain showers in the afternoon. Highs around 60. Southwest winds up to 5 mph shifting to the southeast 5 to 15 mph in the afternoon.

The Fishing with Fathers event that was scheduled for Saturday, April 29th has been POSTPONED due to the possibility of inclement weather on that day.

Check with the 12th Street Community Center events on Facebook for updates on the event.

JC Post will also post new information once a rescheduled date has been announced.