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Hurricane

Hurricane ‘Superstorm’ Sandy struck New Jersey on October 29, 2012, causing harm to the health of New Jersey residents and billions of dollars of damage to businesses, transportation, and infrastructure. Monitoring health outcomes for increased illness and injury due to a severe weather event is important in measuring the severity of conditions and the efficacy of state response, as well as in emergency response preparations for future severe weather events. Following the experience with Hurricane Sandy and the foreseeable need to be prepared for future severe weather events, NJDOH initiated a project to develop a suite of 20 indicators in EpiCenter, an online system which collects emergency department chief complaint data in realtime, to perform syndromic surveillance of extreme weather–related conditions.

Objective

To introduce and describe methods for evaluating and refining custom classifier keyword lists for syndromic surveillance of several post-severe weather event conditions and to report findings from New Jersey’s syndromic surveillance of selected conditions in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

 

Submitted by Magou on

Hurricane Sandy hit New York City (NYC) on October 29, 2012. Before and after the storm, 73 temporary evacuation shelters were established. The total census of these shelters peaked at approximately 6,800 individuals. Concern about the spread of communicable diseases in shelters prompted the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) to rapidly develop a surveillance system to report communicable diseases and emergency department transports from shelters. We describe the implementation of this system.

Submitted by uysz on

Following Hurricane Superstorm Sandy, the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) developed indicators to enhance syndromic surveillance for extreme weather events in EpiCenter, an online system that collects and analyzes real-time chief complaint emergency department (ED) data and classifies each visit by indicator or syndrome.

Submitted by uysz on

Transmission of infectious diseases became an immediate public health concern when approximately 27,000 New Orleans-area residents evacuated to Houston's Astrodome and Reliant Park Complex following Hurricane Katrina. This article presents a surveillance system that was rapidly developed and implemented for daily tracking of various symptoms in the evacuee population in the Astrodome “megashelter.” This system successfully confirmed an outbreak of acute gastroenteritis and became a critical tool in monitoring the course of this outbreak.

Objective

Submitted by uysz on

Hurricane ‘Superstorm’ Sandy struck New Jersey on October 29, 2012, causing harm to the health of New Jersey residents and billions of dollars of damage to businesses, transportation, and infrastructure. Monitoring health outcomes for increased illness and injury due to a severe weather event is important in measuring the severity of conditions and the efficacy of state response, as well as in emergency response preparations for future severe weather events. Following the experience with Hurricane Sandy, NJDOH initiated a project to develop a suite of 19 indicators, known as the Severe Weather Classifier (SWC) in EpiCenter, an online system which collects emergency department chief complaint data in real-time, to perform syndromic surveillance of extreme weather–related conditions. NJDOH has since used these classifiers in more recent events to monitor for weather-related visits to storm-affected area emergency departments (ED’s).

In June, 2015, a squall line of damaging thunderstorms, known as a “bow echo,” caused downed wires and multi-day power outages in Camden and Gloucester counties in southern New Jersey. Almost exactly seven months later, in January, 2016, Winter Storm Jonas dropped more than a foot of snow over New Jersey. These events provided an opportunity to assess the indicators within SWC. 

Objective

To report the results of the application of New Jersey’s Severe Weather Classifier in New Jersey’s syndromic surveillance system during two extreme weather events. 

Submitted by Magou on
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