Governor needs more authority to defend state, panel told

CARSON CITY -- The state should consider giving the governor broad emergency powers to enact a mass quarantine and to take over private property in the event of a biological attack or other emergency, the Nevada Homeland Security Committee was told Wednesday.

The panel also heard a proposal to set up a regional state health lab in Las Vegas to save time required to send suspicious items to Reno for analysis. Dr. Dee Brown, director of the state health division's only testing facility in Reno, said this morning that Las Vegas may be one of the only metropolitan areas of its size without a public health laboratory within 100 miles.

A second state lab is badly needed, Brown said. The 26 people working at the 18,000-square-foot Reno lab are continually busy, he said, adding that the addition of a Las Vegas facility would shorten return times on tests significantly.

Brown said the Las Vegas facility would likely be smaller than the Reno lab, which has an annual budget of about $2 million.

In regard to new emergency powers for the governor, Randall Todd, chief of the state Bureau of Disease Control and Intervention, told the Homeland Security Committee that the Legislature may have to approve a "Health Power Act." This would give the governor the authority to enact, for example, a mass quarantine to stop the spread of a disease such as smallpox.

The governor may also need the power to appropriate private property in times of a crisis -- such as an earthquake or other disaster -- to provide medical care for victims. Nevada law now allows health authorities to issue quarantine powers, Todd said told the group, "but they are issued individually, one at a time."

Under current conditions there may be the need to quarantine a number of people simultaneously. A hypothetical case may involve a commercial plane with a passenger who, according to a preliminary diagnosis, is infected with smallpox, he said. It would be more effective to issue a mass quarantine, rather than isolating passengers one at a time.

"Understand that quarantine is sort of a last resort type of option that is rarely employed," Todd said, "but it is a tool under certain circumstances."

The act may also need to give the governor power to appropriate private property and materials to treat victims where there are mass casualties.

The powers would be limited to emergencies only, he said.

A need for a second state health laboratory in Las Vegas was shown by the recent anthrax scare, Todd said.

"You would rather have that information a day sooner than a day later," he said. The testing should be done in a "Level B" lab -- the designation of the state lab in Reno -- as opposed to a facility with less sophisticated equipment.

The committee, composed of local, state and federal officials, talked about developing a list of the facilities in Nevada that may be most vulnerable to an attack, what protective equipment should be issued to emergency responders and setting up a computer tracking system to help detect outbreaks of infectious disease and signs of possible bio-terrorism.

The committee also discussed the sharing of information among law enforcement agencies to combat terrorism.

Sun reporter Emily Richmond contributed to this story.

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