Video: Delaware County plans for the worst

Jessica Vecchione, a Watershed Post video contributor and advertiser, works as a videographer for hire around Delaware County. She just finished a project for Bassett Healthcare Network, which outlines what, exactly, O'Connor Hospital in Delhi and the Delaware County emergency services team will do if we're all suddenly beset with fire, flood, or plague. You can watch the video above.

This kind of outreach is necessary. Delaware County declared a state of emergency during the October 1 floods last fall, but few people we spoke with during our reporting of the crisis knew about it.

Vecchione's video interviews Rich Bell, Delaware County's emergency coordinator, who advises county residents to check the county's website (that's what we do), listen to local radio, and sign up for the excellent NY-Alert email system, which puts warnings right in your email inbox.

The video also contains some harrowing footage of a decontamination drill that O'Connor Hospital conducted last fall. It's eerie: Hazmat-suited doctors pretend to treat an outbreak of a horrible disease carried by a hacking, coughing actor on an otherwise beautiful fall day. It could happen for real sometime.

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