State Health officials allerted during attack

Before it was clear how bad Tuesday’s incident was, or what kind of attack it included, Iowa’s Public Health Department went on alert. State epidemiologist Dr. Patricia Quinlisk says they had to assume there was the risk of a biological attack including toxins or disease organisms.Quinlisk says officials have spent the last decade or so preparing for manmade disasters. Quinlisk says from the public-health point of view, preparation is the second-best way to deal with a disaster or attack. She says the best thing is to prevent the incident in the first place.Quinlisk says people generally reacted the right way, which was to stay calm and help those trained in disaster-response to put emergency plans into action.