The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

economist sunsuntribune top stories of 2003 saturday jan 3 2004 yorks sars outbreak touched everyone by lisa queen staff writer granted virtually no one walked the streets in protective face masks under fear of death as much as cnn was determined to portray that image of us to the world but at the same time it would also be difficult to find a york region resident not touched in some way by last years sars crisis absolutely and without ques tion i would say sars was the largest and most significant event for york region in 2003 said associate medical officer of health dr hanif kassam who stickhandled the issue for the region i think it is a situation that signif icantly and permanently changed howl we deal with infectious dis eases not only in york region ontario and canada but interna tionally york became a global hotspot for the potentially fatal respiratory dis ease which gripped the internation al community last winter and spring fred tufnell chairperson of the simcoeyork district health council believes sars left a permanent imprint on a region particularly hard hit by the virus it gave everybody a wake up call it a deadly contagious disease can happen here and it can happen again it will happen again i think he said adding sars also showed how well health care workers and institutions can work together to fight a crisis we cant be complacent any more we have to be vigilant it can arise anywhere at any time the region recorded nine deaths due to sars seven of which were york residents another 110 residents were diag nosed and recovered from the illness born in china at the end of 2002 thousands of residents were quarantined at home after being exposed to the virus at the height of the first outbreak in early april 5000 york residents were quarantined about 3000 faced the same fate at the height of the sec ond outbreak at the end of may yorks medical staff were hardest hit by the sars outbreaks in fact markhams nelia laroza a veteran nurse at north york general hospital became the first health care worker in ontario to die of sars the 51 yearold mother who died in july was also connected to another group hard hit by sars the regions students ms larbzas son who contracted file photo staff at markham stouffville hospital wore masks to protect themselves and patients during the first sars outbreak in march the disease from his mother unwit tingly attended classes while infect ed with the contagious virus as a result markhams father michael mcgivney catholic academy was shut down and its students and staff forced into quarantine we cant be complacent anymore we have to be vigilant it can arise anywhere at any time father mcgivney wasnt the only school impacted by the virus hundreds of students at alexander mackenzie high school in richmond hill were quaran tined because they had volun teered at or visited neighbouring york central hospital during march the hospital was forced to close for 20 days beginning march 28 when a patient was found to be infected with the virus only several days after being admitted the eld erly man died staff at markham stouffville were devastated when a nurse contracted the disease while treat ing sars patients the diagnosis was one of the first indications onerous precau tions taken by medical staff werent always enough to fend off the dis ease the worst part for our group was the day we found out one of our coworkers was sick even though she was fully protected nurse yvonne warner said at the time we all just broke down and cried we all thought if she got it then im going to get it my family is now at risk it was awful meanwhile markham stouff ville was forced to close its over burdened emergency department to all but lifethreatening cases for several days in april blackout left region in dark by jerome watt staff writer aug 14 residents of york region were among the 50 mil lion people in ontario and the united states who were plunged into darkness by the largest blackout in north american his tory how did york region perform during the blackout and will it be ready for another fortunately things worked out well at vaughan hydro chair person for the utility and councillor susan kadis said while control over the black out was out of the local utilitys hands vaughan hydros emer gency preparedness plan worked well she said an americancanadian task force found ohio power compa ny firstenergy corp triggered events that caused the blackout the supply of power in the province is managed by the independent marketing operator which doles out the power to local utilities ms kadis was also impressed by staffs performance during the blackout and public coopera tion in reducing usage once power was restored power consumption dropped 20 to 30 per cent when power was slowly restored the next day in response to pleas by vaughan hydro officials to reduce usage despite a good performance allaround ms kadis said there are a few bugs that need to be ironed out in markham 19 natural gas- fuelled generators installed on 14th avenue to stop summer brownouts were not used during the blackout because there was no working grid into which they could feed power while demand rose for york regional police things went rela tively well said insp mark grant head of the communications bureau the majority of calls were inquiry calls as opposed to ones for service he said in case of an emergency at police headquarters in newmarket such as a blackout the communications staff mem bers have practised moving oper ations to the richmond hill back up centre we have implemented our procedure if we have to bug out insp grant said the majority of the forces communications towers remained powered but the sec ondary towers didnt have back up electricity weve installed supplemen tary power systems at every site now insp grant said fortunately crimes of oppor tunity were much lower than expected there was no looting or wide spread activity he said it cer tainly had the potential to be worse than it was there was no looting or widespread activity it certainly had the potential to be worse than it was insp mark grant head of communications bureau for york regional police it took 112 days for police to catch up with the workload fol lowing the blackout he said even though newmarkets southlake regional health centre had a backup generator the hos pital found it needed more power we havent had to run those generators for so long in any bodys lifetime said paul clarry vicepresident of redevelopment and support services following the blackout southlake officials conducted a study on some of the things they could improve upon while the main systems at the hospital were powered by a back up generator nonessential serv ices such as air conditioners refrigerators and stoves werent when the power went out the hospitals main computer system remained running throughout the blackout but non- core computers were shut down in the future the hospital will increase its power generation capacity so all these systems can keep running in the event of a blackout mr clarry said staff also found stockpiles of batteries and flashlights set aside for the y2k scare had been deplet ed mr clarry said staff will now have a dedicated supply in case such an emergency arises again one tit mvv- york regions youffi newspaper ftl tfltl m t g th this hot group y oe v the rrntonsoukure show nbaxu n te cae they played they arnazed jj ew nosor a naeeuushovs new ateitame ad volt fceaurf fyiflfc ichaoff wwwoneeightyca for advertising call bryce mcgregor at 9052942200