In an effort to test the speed of an emergency response, the Howard County Health Department was slated to execute drills June 18 in North Laurel and Ellicott City.

Staff members planned to distribute food to residents while conducting a statewide pandemic flu exercise, said Lisa de Hernandez, public information officer for the county health department.

In the event of an actual emergency, officials could be faced with the task of rapidly distributing medicines to households.

In the drill, scheduled to be conducted in the Chateau Ridge Lake neighborhood in Ellicott City and the Hammond Elementary and Middle School area of North Laurel, officials planned to test two methods of distribution. In the first method, the "medicine" — in this case the granola bars and fruit — were to be distributed door to door. In the second method, residents were to be asked to visit a centralized distribution point in their neighborhood to collect the "medicine."

This was the first time the door-to-door distribution method was to be used on the East Coast, county health officer Dr. Peter Beilenson said.

Beilenson said such a distribution method could be useful in a number of public health emergencies, such as an outbreak of pandemic flu or following a biological terrorist attack.

Leaflets about the drill were sent out to residents in the testing areas ahead of time, Beilenson said.

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