Farm flood health threats; 2019 lessons learned

Shay

Foulk: Hey, podcast! Today's episode may be a little bit different than what we've done in the past, but it's certainly an important topic for many of you. We know that a lot of you suffered from flooding in 2019. On top of that, had an extremely wet year. This discussion goes specifically with some of the top minds that were dealing with the flooding at the time some of the impacts that they saw and things that you can do moving forward if we were to experience this in 2020. Now, I'll knock on wood here hoping that that doesn't happen, but we think it's extremely important to have this information available to you because what we'd hate to see is for all of these lessons learned from 2019 to be kicked to the wayside. So be sure to listen into this if you're someone that you think might be affected by flooding in 2020. If there's some information that you want to learn.

There's 4 or 5 different topics within the podcast, so feel free to jump around to some that might be relevant to you, but lots of great information. This was a webinar that was recorded on the AgriSafe Network Podcast. Be sure to check out some of their learning labs and some of the information that they have there. They have a lot going on for farmers and a lot going on in the world of egg safety and health. Thanks for listening, everybody.

Natalie: Hello, welcome to the AgriSafe Network webinar on winter farm flood health threats, risk factors during recovery. We appreciate you joining us today. We know it's very important because there's a lot of devastation with flooding across the Midwest, and we feel this is an important time to come together and make sure we address those high-risk health areas. We're fortunate because sponsoring this event is also the Center for Agricultural Safety and Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. So the AgCenter has been very helpful for us in terms of pushing this information out and also identifying speakers for today's presentation. We have a lot of material to cover, so we'll try to get right to the, the content of the presentation.

Because this was made available as a public training, we're going to have people join us today from all different backgrounds, and that's okay. The purpose is to provide a general oversight on those health risks that may be seen on that farm when it floods, which we know can be very different when a farm floods because of the nature of that industry. So I'm going to move forward here and explain to you a little bit about how our webinars work, if this is your first time with us. If you're not familiar with AgriSafe, we've been around since 2003, and our job is to protect the people who feed the world. We do a lot of distance education through webinars, and so we've had experience in the area of flood recovery as well, because we know it's something that's been affecting, obviously, parts of the country for a long time now, and we have to be responsive.

So several years ago, we hosted our first webinar on flood recovery and brought in experts, and we continue to do that type of work. But if you're not familiar with us, we offer a lot of trainings, not just in areas of natural disaster, but also as it relates to the health and well-being of the farmer. At the end of the day, we want to see that farmers and ranchers can live a long life, productive life, and not suffer from illnesses related to their occupation. So you can see a lot of the work we do is based on those occupational exposures, like respiratory, hearing loss, ergonomics, you name it. Certainly with the threats of floods, there's a lot of health risks that are of concern to us. That's why we're involved in this issue. So please, if this is your first time with AgriSafe, please make sure to follow our work. You can follow it through social media.

Being a member is very important as well. You get access to over 80 trainings on demand that you can view in your own time. So we hope to hear from you if there are trainings that have interest to you that you can't find. Again, today's webinar is specifically focused on the winter farm flood health threats. Um, it will be recorded, so that means that you can share this link with others, and you'll be able to find that on our website. To navigate today's training is pretty easy. If you have a question, you're going to go ahead and ask your question in that chat box, and we're going to be taking most of the questions at the end. But as you think about that question, feel free to add that to the chat box. Also, keep in mind, if you're having any technical issues, put that in the chat box as well. I'll be moderating the session and happy to help you.

I'm going to go ahead and, um, before I switch to our first presenter, I'm just going to go right to our website so that you can be familiar with what's available through AgriSafe as it relates specifically to the flood issues. In your materials section on this training, you'll find several different documents. One of them is going to be this Farm Flood Health Threat fact sheet. We've had that developed for several years, but we did modify it to be specific to winter recovery, which we know is different to recover from a winter flood than it does from a summer flood, like from a hurricane. You'll see the areas on this fact sheet. There's 6 content areas in the back side of the fact sheet. We talk about human and animal threats, like zoonosis, well water, chemicals, mold, stress, and cold stress.

These are 6 main areas that we're concerned with, but we know there's so much more when it comes to flood recovery for a farm. Things like electrical shocks, drowning, falls, structural hazards. We'll be touching upon that a little bit today, but I just want to make sure you're aware that this fact sheet is for you to use, for you to disseminate, and hopefully you'll find it helpful. If you wanted to know where we got this fact sheet from, again, um, it's on our website, and we have an entire page dedicated to all the resources we'll be talking about today. So it's called Safe and Healthy Recovery After Flooding. Please visit that site. Also, that's where you'll find information about today's recording if you want to go back and listen to the recording or share it with others. You'll find it on this page. I'm going to go ahead and move over right now to our presenter.

I'm very fortunate to have with us Linda Emanuel, who is a nurse with Agrisafe. She's been with us for about 16 months, and she is located in Nebraska. And because of what's happening in Nebraska with the flooding, we felt it was appropriate for her to share some insight on that community response. So, Linda, I'm gonna go ahead and make you the— I'm gonna unmute your mic. And whoops, sorry about that. You'll have to go ahead and unmute your mic. It looks like you're muted. I'm gonna go back to the slides, and I'm gonna show the slides that you're interested in talking about. So, Linda, you should be ready to go when you're ready.

Linda: I am ready. Thank you, Natalie, and hello everyone. I'd like to say that we are talking to you from the shores of our farm, which is normally surrounded by dry farm cropland, and now we have lakes, multiple lakes surrounding our farm. We are farmers here in east central Nebraska. We raise corn, soybeans, seed soybeans, and seed corn, along with helping our sons with their cow-calf herd operation. We are a multiple-generational farm, and our farms are actually located on top of a bluff that overlooks the Platte River Valley. On the east side of our state, we have two rivers, the Platte River and the Elkhorn River, and those two rivers are what has caused the great amount of flooding and devastation to our area. These two rivers then flow into the Missouri River.

And so a week ago, it was just a little over a week ago, that emergency management systems notified our community and our area that the potential for flooding was there, this bomb cyclone storm as they called it, was coming in and to be prepared. My community that we have our school and all of our services in has a population of 1,200 folks, so we are relatively small. We are an agricultural-driven community as well as an agricultural-driven state. So on the 12th of March is when emergency management notified us that things could happen. The Platte River flows right along our city and there were ice jams there. We have frozen soil right now because of winter conditions, and just a week prior to the 12th, we were hit with a snowstorm in which we had 2 to 3 feet of snow on the ground.

On the 13th, they called school off and the sandbagging efforts began, incorporating community folks as well as students from our high school and grade school. The 14th is when the rain started. We had torrential rains that I have not seen in my lifetime. There was water over the roads and, um, Things were moving along fairly quickly. Again, school was called off indefinitely. And on the 15th is when a breach began on one of the lakes surrounding North Bend. And that's what flooded our community. There was a mandatory evacuation and the 3 highways that lead into our community were closed because they were impassable. So all folks had to migrate north to a very small little village to find safety and shelter. We alone took in 10 family members and friends, and in many places along the highway leading north out of our town absorbed folks that needed shelter.

So it's, it's been a journey, it's been an adventure. When it came to disaster recovery and assistance, our state leaders pulled upon key leaders within our community who have had little to no experience in disasters. So I'm very excited that we're putting together a webinar to help other folks who may go through this. We had a command center in which there was city council, acting mayor, water and sewage folks, law enforcement, and volunteer firefighters. We had volunteer coordination, a donation depot we called it, in which our high school gymnasium is housing the amazingly, amazingly large volumes of donations coming from other communities in our state as well as our country. We have public health department stepped in and administered tetanus shots, and Red Cross is now here offering mental health aid. I've learned a lot through this journey.

I've learned how strong our community is and how much heart we have to help each other. There are farmers and ranchers that are leaving their own farms that are destroyed and going in to help the folks in our community to clean up and to get back to some kind of a normalcy of life. The issues I've seen, the physical threats, we've had human and animal fecal material issues. Tetraspores, of course, are an issue. Fungal histoplasmosis. What I've actually visualized was soiled carpets in folks' homes because sewer systems backed up, they were full and overflowing, heavy sludge on sidewalks, in and within homes. I was part of a canvas team that went door-to-door that tried to determine needs and to let the folks know to where get— to get assistance.

Slips, trips, and falls became an issue because we have overnight freezing, and so that sludge gets fairly slick and folks have been slipping and falling. Chemicals, I've seen gas containers that were tipped over. We have local cooperatives, farm cooperatives, in our community that have a lot of your insecticides and herbicides as well as anhydrous needed that we use to treat and to care for our crops, and some of those containers were floating along and landed on folks' yards. Cold stress was a big issue. We are still in winter here. Actually, the first day of spring was yesterday, and it was nice to see the sun shining. But the cold stress was an issue. Folks put boots on, but some of those boots weren't adequate enough to protect their feet and their appendages from being cold. And also fatigue was setting in.

We have a volunteer fire department, and those folks have been monitoring the levees and the dikes for over a week now and not sleeping. And actually abandoning their own homes and families to take care of our community. Mental health stress, I have been seeing that come in waves. Initially, it was anguish and anxiety and shock and just trying to digest what was going on and unable to sleep. In the days following, I saw anger, hopelessness, confusion. So because we're a small community, we don't have that TV coverage or that radio coverage that we need to know what was going on and to get actual factual information. So our newspaper editor stepped up and was providing Facebook Live posts as well as Twitter updates as to when the city, what was going on with the floodwaters and when it would be safe to come in and then where to get assistance.

Now that we're into day 7, I'm seeing extreme fatigue, tears, people are crying unexpectedly, anxiety, they're short-tempered and just looking for normalcy. How do we get back to what we, be perceived as a normal life. What I saw immediate needs were, was PPE and the education for it. We did have a public forum meeting the second day the folks were allowed in town where they invited the whole community to come in to get the needed education and to know what assistance was there. And so I was invited to that panel and I talked about the potential threats as well as what to do about it and simple tasks. And you have to keep in mind, we don't have the Home Depots and those large box stores that would have that PPE available, so it's whatever we could get our hands on. I talked about the N95 masks, I talked about appropriate boots, the long sleeve shirts, goggles, and the protective cover.

That picture that Natalie has up right now is actually my family, and the gentleman in yellow had sewage-laden carpets in his basement, so our guys went in and ripped that up and pulled it out. And so they're pretty much covered appropriately, except I see 3 of them need their goggles on. But you have to remember, it's hard to get a hold of that equipment. When our donation depot started setting up cleaning station, we put the PP kits, PPE kits, into their cleaning buckets, so they had it. A lot of folks don't think about it. They don't think it's necessary. So, it's actually, what I've seen is that we need to educate and then put these products in their hands. It's kind of funny, I went into the high school as a Corps volunteer coordinator and then I've become, now I've become a public health consultant. So, very thankful that I have a great network around me.

The folks at UNMC's Center of Ag Safety and Health have been amazingly supportive in helping me to wade through the issues, as well as my own team at AgriSafe. In looking forward, what we're doing today is continued volunteer assistance as far as helping folks get things out of their home. We are an aging community, so helping those older people remove the things that they need to to get them out on the curbs, and then actually farmers have stepped in with their large equipment to move that debris over to a collection site and to get it out of the city. So those are the things that we're dealing with now. You know, step by step we're getting better. Very thankful that I've been surrounded by good people to help navigate this whole long journey.

Natalie: Thank you, Linda, for that, that great overview. And really, Linda's role— she's a public health nurse, works for Agrisafe— but the timing of it was perfect because she's a great resource for her community. We're very interested in trying to assist other public health nurses to be able to do what Linda's able to do. So if you are a health professional and you need access to get some good information, basic steps, please reach out to us. We want to make it easy for you to provide that technical assistance. I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next presenter. And this presenter is Dr. Chad Roy. He's the Director of Infectious Disease Air Biology at the— and also he's the Director of the Biodefense Research Program at Tulane National Primate Research Center. He's a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Tulane School of Medicine, so many hats.

But what's unique about Dr. Chatterjee's background is that he started his work in his thesis PhD dissertation working for the University of Iowa studying the endotoxin that's released when soybeans are being harvested. So he has an appreciation of the risk that farmers face every day and of course the mold aspects too. So this was very timely to have him involved. Dr. Roy, let me go ahead and find you here on the— make you the presenter. Well, you already are the presenter, good.

Chad: I think I am the presenter, and thank you, Natalie.

Natalie: You're ready to go.

Chad: I trust you can hear me okay, so I'll thank you for that introduction, and we're going to spend the next couple of minutes going a little bit from the general to the specific in terms of the microbiological consequences of flooding, and I talked similarly about this when we had devastating flooding down in Louisiana a couple of years ago, and some of the tenets that I spoke of at that time hold true in this very unfortunate catastrophe that's taken place in Nebraska and Iowa at this time. And if anything, to give a better appreciation for what is actually taking place and why we see such terrible contamination of both bacteria as well as fungi and their products in these types of contexts. So, next. Okay, so the numerous sources for microbial contamination, especially in agricultural environment, are numerous. The number one is contact with organic substrates, soil.

Soil is comprised of a third to half of microbial content in a tablespoon of soil. If you can imagine when floodwaters come into contact with that for a long period of time, and that illustration on this particular slide that that's up here. What to remember is that the compaction that we normally see in soil is loosened because of the, of the water intrusion into that for prolonged periods of time. And the net effect of that is the release of mainly non-pathogenic but microbial organisms nonetheless. When absorption takes place in that particular scenario. So you have saturated conditions, and in that panel C there, in that illustration, shows that you have an effective release of that into the environment.

Because of all the water activity, which is essential for microbial growth, is available at that time, you can, you can see algal blooms and molds and also bacterial growth in places that normally are not affected by that. And I should mention as well that other organic components, not only soil, but, but things like hay bales, especially if they are protected, they can still be vulnerable to this if you're, you're coating them or wrapping them. If there's any break in that and water can get into those areas, as well as in husbandry operations, which can release not only non-pathogenic organisms, but also potentially pathogenic and zoonotic disease agents that are sometimes harbored in animals on the farm. So I mentioned the basis for microbial growth is the source, which we have numerous sources on the farm and agricultural operations, more so than urban environments.

And so it stands in stark contrast to what you would see in a flooding situation in an urban environment. And agricultural environment is somewhat more at risk for, for this and for the consequences thereof, as well as the water activity. So all microorganisms, as a kind of a truism, and we're surrounded by them at all times, require water in an available form to grow. And the availability of water is measured by that water activity that you see. And in these situations, closed areas, husbandry operations, as well as in the ambient environment. There's water everywhere in a flood, and so it's provided essentially that nutrient to grow, to sporulate, or to grow into blooms that can cause problems. So you have kind of a perfect scenario, unfortunately, for microbial growth. Now, because this is taking place in a, in a cooler environment, that growth is tempered.

But if you remember, a lot of these microorganisms are being delivered to areas that they normally don't come into contact with in, say, in buildings, ceilings and walls of buildings, and they can stay there. And so well after the floodwaters have receded, there's still microbial growth that can take place in these areas that accordingly you should not come into contact with. And that can be, that can be a real problem, especially for remediation, if you think about it, when it's not readily apparent that it has been delivered to that area, especially when a flood is ongoing. So it can be a hazard that's almost subtle and hidden until the point where remediation takes place as well. So it's omnipresent in these types of scenarios.

I had mentioned that the vast majority of the microbiology surrounding floods is non-pathogenic, meaning that they are planktonic and they are around us at all times, not causing disease, thankfully., and there's only a very small percentage of bacteria or fungi that can cause human disease, and luckily we're shielded from them at most times. One of the major hazards associated with exposure to non-infectious microbial growth, which is the vast majority of the exposures that would be going, you know, ongoing in a flood situation or in the residual of a flooding situation, is the exposure products, one of which is volatile organic compounds. So VOCs that are the same types of VOCs that are produced by some chemicals with low vapor pressures, except they're produced by this biological source.

And VOCs are that terrible noxious smell that one may get, the sickly sweet smell that one may get when you have mold contamination, for instance, in a home. And this can cause incredible discomfort. There's a very low olfactory threshold for these VOCs because of the nature of how they're composed. And as a result, it can cause discomfort. It can ultimately irritate nervous system and just be a real pain going forward, and it's unfamiliar. And that's one of the things in an active flood or in the consequences of a flood that can be a real head-scratcher on where the smell is coming from. And more times than none, it can be from microbial source, which, you know, a lot of us are not familiar with in a farming operation. Are not as familiar as say the smell of methane or from manure, say from a husbandry operation, which are more familiar smells that you put up with in that environment.

Another thing that is very important to keep in mind in terms of flooding is that rather than these three components, the generation, the transport, and exposure process taking place in distinct phases of one being at risk for exposure, say, to an environmental contaminant such as microbial growth, is that in a flood they all happen at the same time. And you can have active growth, so dispersion and growth of of microorganisms, the transport is there. It's the flood and the floodwaters that it's transported it to, an unfamiliar source, and then the exposure that's taking place at the same time.

So there's very few scenarios where you can have the generation, the transport, and the exposure all together, and I guess the net effect of that is that interventions like PPE have to be omnipresent in that situation rather than preparing to use PPE in the event that you may come into contact with a hazardous component in the, in the work environment. And so it, it may sound kind of a nebulous idea, but it's a very important one when you're considering when to use personal protective equipment like in in this case, when an N95 is donned to avoid exposure to particulate matter. So using it at all times in these environments is very, very important when assessing the hazard.

So the other thing that is to keep in mind is that the contamination from the water from flooding is truly a witch's brew, and no contact, avoiding all contact at all times, no matter what visually the water looks like, is so terribly important through barrier protection and/or other personal protective equipment that can protect you, like some of the things that Linda just mentioned, from not only the biological contaminants, which I focused on the last several slides, but also the chemical contaminants. Things like petroleum products and distillates that can have a pathway based on their vapor pressure. If those get tipped in the density, they have the propensity to float on floodwaters, for instance.

Agricultural industrial chemicals can be toxic at very low levels, and because we are really upended in terms of our exposures, and that this could be a continuous or repeated exposure to these chemicals, even though they may have some form of dilution in floodwaters. There's a repeated exposure that's taking place or has a potential to take place there, mixed with the biological contamination of this biota, so this microbial source contribution from the soil. That has been subsequently liberated from the soil from the floodwaters and is now in solution. As well as things like carcasses and release from carcasses of things that are normally otherwise non-pathogenic because they're in the animals, but if you can think of things like, you know, things like E.

coli, even, that are normally in the intestinal tract of an animal that may be liberated when the animal dies from drowning, or other subclinical zoonotics that could be liberated as well and carried by these floodwaters. You have this combination that you're at risk of exposure to. Finally, and I wanna just mentioned about wellhead protection, and most water sources in rural areas, including the farm, are from wells. The wellhead protection, the way that wellheads are designed, and that sanitary seal that we have on our wellheads can be breached by the outward pressure of floodwaters trying to get in. Subsequently contaminating your groundwater source, which can be a massive problem for potable water sources, for not only residential but also husbandry operations, and can adversely affect husbandry operations in these times.

And, you know, so for providing potable water for husbandry can be very challenging if you have a well that's contaminated in this way. I guess the— and the next speaker's gonna talk more about the specifics of this, but if that loss of the integrity of the sanitary seal on those wellhead happens, it can lead to fouling and contamination, not only from some of the biological agents that I talked about, but also some of these chemical agents that may have been liberated into those floodwaters as well, which is a real mess. To not only just not use, but also recover in some sort of remediation on reusing that well, which is a whole nother talk in that regard.

So finally, I guess kind of the take-home in terms of the microbiology surrounding a flooding event is that it's very, very difficult, if near impossible, to measure, you know, the exposure assessment in these types of scenarios because everything is so— such a magnitude in terms of contamination as well as the potential exposure to that contamination. So to understand what personal protective equipment is needed and required in this type of situation, especially because the generation, transport, and exposure are taking place all at once, is a very difficult thing to do. And so it has to be approached in a much different way than other hazards on the farm that we can assess properly and say, yeah, you're using this, you're using that, or this is recommended for use.

In this particular, you know, going into a husbandry confinement, for instance, you know what you're gonna wear, for instance. So barrier protection and avoidance are the best practices. Barrier protection in the forms of just not coming into contact or avoiding all contact with floodwaters, which is kind of difficult thing to do when you're surrounded by it. Protecting yourself as best you can with the required PPE that you can get your hands on, both at the time of flooding and when you're going through an event, which is still happening at this point, as well as, and it cannot be stressed enough, in the residual, in the remediation process, whatever that may be, actively right after a flood, or days later, that protection is absolutely critical in all of those scenarios in that regard.

Natalie: Thank you, Dr. Roy, for that overview, and I know there's a lot of information there, so you did a great job of summarizing that. We're going to move on to the next presenter, and we're fortunate to have with us Dr. Bruce Dvorak, who is a professor of civil engineering and biological systems with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. So thank you for joining us. All of our presenters were asked on Monday to present today, so appreciate coming to, coming to the presentation and being available. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you.

Unknown: Thank you, Natalie, and Chad gave a great setup for my talk. I wanna talk a little bit about well water safety. I'm showing here an extension page the University of Nebraska has related to this topic. I'm going to, in my presentation, summarize some of what's— let me get this up— summarize some of what's on that page, and kinda talk about the different resources that we have at the University of Nebraska. And here we go. So we're gonna talk about well water safety after flooding, and I want to start kind of continuing where Chad left off, just talking about private well systems. Basically, we've got the well, and hopefully there's, as Chad mentioned, a sanitary seal to minimize any risk of any sort of water from flooding or inundation getting into a well.

Fortunately, here in Nebraska, we have a number of public water supplies that had their wells actually inundated, but their sanitary seal was strong enough that it basically did not allow any water, any contamination from flooding, to go down through the grout next to the well where they had dug the well out to contaminate the well. A few other just basic kind of factors I want— or things I want to mention. Obviously, there's a pump, piping, there's electrical power going to the well, and in many cases for domestic wells, there's a bladder system for storage. I want to briefly think about before flooding, what can be done to minimize the risk of contamination and to kind of improve the safety. One is just to disconnect the power supply.

Two, if there is a a well vent— many older systems have screen vents— to plug that with a watertight plug, or to have that extended, like many municipalities do, to a much higher elevation where it won't be inundated by the flood. That'll reduce the risk of any water getting through. Also, if there is kind of an older well where there may be pathways for water to enter, Covering it with heavy-duty plastic, securing it using waterproof tape, may be very helpful. And I know in some cases, both municipalities and some individuals with domestic wells may use sandbags or water-inflated flood barriers to protect a domestic well or a municipal well. As far as the most vulnerable wells that might be at greatest risk of becoming contaminated from floodwaters or surface water runoff.

One is if there's a well that there is a well pit, in other words, a location that water may gather in above the well, that's gonna be at risk. If there are any older dug wells, those obviously don't have a sanitary seal, they're very easily contaminated. Wells that lack what we would call a grout seal in the annular space, that's this kind of putting in— it may be like a bentonite clay on the outer side of the casing to kind of secure the space where they dug the well hole and put the casing down to make it so water can't go down between those. If they lack a grout seal, that's a concern. In some cases, older wells, 30, 40 years old, may not have a good grout seal. Wells that lack a watertight casing or cap, that's the sanitary seal that we're talking about that Chad mentioned. Those without that, or where over time that is degraded, are also at risk.

If a well has not been inspected by a certified well installer in the last 5 years, that always is of concern to me. Is it sufficient? Is it really still safe? And obviously, any well that was submerged touched by floodwaters and surface waters are going to be of concern. Ultimately, what we're saying is if floodwaters even have come within 100 feet or less of your well, it's really a good idea to have the water tested as a precaution. Now, how to manage the drinking water wells after flooding. If there's reason to believe a private water supply well, the water quality has been compromised, Number 1, don't use water for cooking, cleaning, drinking, brushing your teeth until after lab analysis has confirmed that it's safe. Also, if the well was potentially inundated, work with a licensed well contractor to inspect the well and clean out any debris or sediment that entered the well.

Now, what are the options during and after the flooding to have water to consume. Obviously, using bottled water is a very good option, or another option is to boil water. Bring water to vigorous rolling boil for at least 1 minute. This is what the Center for Disease Control and the US EPA each recommend. I know our group has done some literature review digging back into some of the original literature, and 1 minute makes good sense. We don't recommend going for more than a minute because if you're evaporating a large amount of water, it's possible actually to concentrate other contaminants such as nitrate within the water. If the water from boiling doesn't taste well, we recommend pour the water between two containers to re-aerate it and maybe even add a pinch of salt. That may improve the taste.

In some cases, individuals need a larger volume of water than getting bottled water or boiling can provide. They're using liquid bleach, is a possibility to chlorinate, and in a sense doing no different than many community water supplies do. So this is a case of using regular household bleach, or sodium hypochlorite, so only active ingredient, adding about 6 drops per gallon, stirring it, and letting it sit for 30 minutes. There should be a slight chlorine smell after 30 minutes. That really point— or that would confirm that you don't have old bleach, but bleach that has sufficient active ingredient. And we have a reference from the University of Nebraska through Extension related to emergency treatment, for instance, with chlorine bleach. Testing. We encourage using a certified testing lab to test for bacteria.

Um, any lab's going to provide a test kit with detailed instructions, so you'll want to obtain a sterile bottle from the water testing lab here in Nebraska. A number of our Natural Resource District offices and Extension offices also have these bottles available to pick up to be able to use. I've also got a list here in Nebraska of the certified testing labs that one can work with, and also because there's been a big rush of samples from both community supplies and private supplies, you know, domestic wells, we're seeing these labs are very busy, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has actually set up in the last few days a mobile testing lab in Omaha to help kind of address the number of samples coming in. Let me say a little bit about testing for bacteria from private well. You'll first of all find sometimes there may be a little bit of powder in the sample bottle.

That's basically going to be part of the test, so leave that in there. Choose an inside faucet to collect the water sample, remove the aerator if there's one present, and turn on the cold water and run it for at least 5 minutes. The goal is to be sure you're pulling water from the well and not water that maybe was pulled from the well before the flooding and would not be representative of what's in the well. In a few cases, I know there's farmsteads that may have a very large pressure tank or may have a very complex, longer, uh, set of pipes. In that case, one may need to use their judgment and run for longer than 5 minutes to get a representative sample from the well. As one takes a sample, be very careful on touching inside the bottle or the cap, and remove the cap carefully from the container holding on the outside of the cap.

Among community water supply operators, one common source for erroneous false positives for bacteria is is actually just having the person collecting the samples touch inside the cap or touch inside the bottle. So be very careful about that. In addition, fill the container to the marked level. Often that's about 100 milliliters or 3/4 of the bottle. And be sure the sample gets to the lab within 30 hours. And It would be good typically to try to keep the sample cool in a refrigerator or cooler. Occasionally individuals may be mailing the sample through the U.S. mail. In that case, try not to send it on a Thursday or Friday so the sample is kind of stuck in the mail over the weekend and heating up and kind of going past the desired time.

We also have for testing NEB guides that kind of step through this information, and typically the labs that you'd be working with are also going to give you instructions for collecting the bacterial sample. Now, what happens if your water sample tests positive? What we recommend is to shock chlorinate the well using, again, chlorine bleach to kill the bacteria, and before using the water test a water sample, and send it to one of the certified labs to confirm that you've really successfully disinfected the well and flushed the well. Typically, as part of the shock chlorination, there's also a very major step of flushing the well. I'm not going to give detailed instructions on shock chlorination, merely because the amount of chlorine to add, the amount of kind of— flushing will really vary depending upon things like the depth of the well, the diameter of the well, the volume of water.

But we have a guide related to shock chlorination. I know many other extension services and other agencies also have guides on shock chlorination and the flushing that's needed to clean out a domestic well. I'll finish this with giving some guidance on where to find more information. First of all, at UNL, we've put together a flood webpage related to, among other things, water quality, to help give guidance. And if anyone's interested, we also at the University of Nebraska have an extension page related to drinking water that has information not only on testing, but also on different contaminants— nitrate, bacteria— how to understand if one does have a test come back that's positive to understand a little more about the contaminant.

We have a series on different domestic treatment systems: reverse osmosis, ion exchange, distillation, and we also have a series on managing one's own domestic well and encourage individuals to utilize those. My email is there as there are questions. Thank you.

Natalie: Thank you, Dr. Dvorak, for a wonderful presentation on this, and there's a lot of useful resources. If you look in our materials section, you'll find a lot of the information he, he was talking about in the materials section, so that's right on your dialogue box. Next, we're going to go ahead and move to our next presenter, Dr. Aaron Yoder. He's an associate professor, Environmental Agricultural Cultural and Occupational Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Extension. He's also with the Biological Systems Engineering at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. So thank you, Dr. Yoder, we're gonna go ahead and turn it over to you.

Unknown: All right, thank you very much. Can you hear me okay?

Natalie: Yes, you're coming in clear.

Unknown: All right, great. So I appreciate that, Bruce. It's always good to see other people at Nebraska and the other resources. Have to admit early on that I utilize the Nebraska Extension resources a lot in many of my work. Um, I'm based out of the Medical Center here in Omaha, um, but I also have a partial appointment in the Biological Systems Engineering where I do agricultural safety and health work, mainly tractor safety and agrability work. Um, but interacting with all our colleagues and all our networking is very helpful. Um, so my presentation today is looking at it from my background, which is the safety side of things. I have some health stuff in here, a little bit of reiteration of what some people have already talked about, but I'll, I'll skip quickly through some of the parts. I apologize for not having pictures, but as Natalie said, this was a pretty quick response.

So hopefully in future events I'll have more images to share with you. The first thing I wanted to mention is personal safety. Again, I said my background was in safety and health and When we— whether we're talking about emergency responses to other agricultural events or these type of events, we want to make sure we keep ourselves healthy and safe. That if we injure ourselves, we're not going to be very helpful for the rest of the process. And a lot of the health information we talked about did that. But I also want to talk about the safety side. So for the first part, you know, being patient, not returning into a flooded site. Until you're safe to return. We'll talk about some of the hazards that are available— that are possible there as we go into this. So thinking safety, taking precautions not only for ourselves but our family and other people, volunteers that are helping us.

We've heard two great talks about water contamination, so we should consider all water we're coming in contact with as contaminated, as either gray or black water. And if you don't know those terms, I encourage you to go look them up, but mainly meaning contaminated water that oftentimes will have fecal material in it. Restricted entry— we shouldn't be bringing our kids, pets, vulnerable people back into these environments. I know some people would like to help or utilize some of this help, but oftentimes those, especially children and older adults, are vulnerable to infections and the impact of those infections. So making sure that we have able-bodied, healthy people helping work in the cleanup efforts. Now, we heard lots of talk about wearing our protective clothing. Something I didn't hear yet that I'd like to mention is to make sure you take clean water with you and stay hydrated.

It's easy to become dehydrated when you're working hard and not thinking about that. We've heard a little bit about protecting our lungs, and I know we'll hear more about that, but just all the things that could be in the air that we're working with. And again, just like with the well water, we don't really know what's in it, so we need to protect ourselves for the worst case scenarios. And then finally, with our personal safety, looking at avoiding the physical strain on us, there's lots of back injuries and other injuries like that, slips and falls we'll hear about, thinking about that. We don't know what's under the floodwater. I saw a picture the other day of one of the streets in Omaha that was covered in floodwater, and it was all buckled and broken into chunks. And if you drive through that, assuming that the road was still there, you'd be in for a big surprise.

The same thing can happen in farmyards and around homes. Sinkholes can open up that you don't realize, maybe it never used to be there, and some of those types of hazards. And then we talk about this being a winter flood, but some of the cold— the water is very cold. So we can deal with situations like hypothermia. So just making sure we take care of ourselves as we go into these sites and deal with some of these other hazards we'll be talking about. So some of the, the potential hazards when we look at homes or other agricultural structures, we know that most of them have the utilities of either gas, water, and electricity. Electricity probably being one of the biggest ones that we first think about Water and electricity don't mix very well, so making sure all that is disconnected. And then when we think about beyond the utilities, things like debris, lots of debris has moved around.

I mentioned road conditions or holes. Buildings and structures could be unstable because of that. Again, we don't want to incur any additional injuries, the slips and falls. And then the floodwaters have displaced a lot of animals, rodents, snakes, and other animals that could potentially harm us. So thinking about that. What structural damage is out there? If we think a structure is unsafe to go into, we should avoid that area until it can be inspected a little bit further. Heard a lot— I live in a community of Plattsmouth just south of the Platte River, and half of my community has flooded basements, or a lot of them do, and there's concerns with pumping out basements when the water is— when the soil is still saturated.— that the basements will actually crush in.

So making sure that you are using the right processes and procedures for pumping water out of spaces that might have waterlogged ground on the outside of it. Supplemental power, we know lots of people are using generators, and there's a lot of warnings out there from the CDC and others about avoiding the fumes from those, as well as electrical shock. From our supplemental power sources. So again, dealing with water and electricity and need to have our supplemental power sources in well-ventilated places. I know a lot of agricultural operations have PTO-driven generators, so for running tractors, have the PTO shafts that are a traditional hazard in agriculture. Turning those generators along with the, the wet and slippery conditions around them we can have some hazardous situations there.

If we do have a barn or a facility, even a home that has heating and cooling equipment that was submerged, making sure we have that inspected by professionals before we fire that back up, thinking that we might be able to dry out the environment, but could cause more issues if we use equipment before it's been properly inspected. And then As we're going through all of this, I know one of the stressors we'll think about later will be also the, the cost of these and some of the recuperation of that. So making sure as we're cleaning things up that we document and report these losses or have a way to report them to our insurance, Farm Service Agency, and those sorts. So getting to some specifics of the agricultural side, There's lots of different aspects of that. Thinking about livestock is one of the first ones we've seen massive amounts of livestock being affected by this.

And we know they're going to act similar to, to us being all pumped full of adrenaline, possibly panicked, confused, not sure what's going on. So that makes handling the animals a little more challenging than normal. Some of our regular facilities are no longer there, the fences, the stockades and that sort of thing, even the barn structures. So they're going to be very much more difficult to, to handle. We want to make sure that when we are handling them, we think of people first, again, not injuring ourselves. Then they talk about saving our pets, and I could go either way with pets or livestock, but making sure then work on the livestock and then the property. So that's sort of the the recommended sequence when we think about safety and evacuation or rounding up animals. We really need to look at safety of ourselves first and then of the animals.

We want to try to make the surrounding as familiar as possible to the livestock. Again, trying to keep that adrenaline level down and the panic and confusion down. And then our main goal is just to get the sort of the scene stabilized, get them to a safe place that we're not going to have to be in contact with them, and part of that includes feeding them again. We're all happier when we eat, right? The next topic just to hit briefly is machinery safety. We know people are going to be using machinery in many different ways than they typically use it. They're going to be helping others with them, and normally we see a rise in machinery incidents when people are doing unplanned tasks. If it's a typical task that you've done a lot of times, oftentimes that's a little bit safer.

When we're using the machinery for things that we may not have planned or overloading the machinery, having more people around it, we see the same basic safety considerations that we've had before. Tractor rollovers when we're trying to pull stuff out of the mud, running people over because they're not usually around the machinery or there's more people around the machinery. And as I mentioned with the portable generators, people getting caught in the equipment. So thinking about those, again, protecting ourselves first. And even before we get to the operation of the machinery, the first line there, making sure that the machinery isn't damaged before we try to use it, because that can lead to, again, some more unplanned events that could lead to injury. And then when we are using the machinery, whether it's in floodwaters not knowing what's under the water.

We know that along the edges of rivers and streams and ponds and even slopes are going to be very unstable, which could lead to additional events. So this applies to even using our motor vehicles in these ways. When it comes to chemicals, we talked already a little bit about what the floodwaters could be contaminated with.. We know that in agriculture we store other chemicals, pesticides, fertilizers, and so forth. If we know that there's a specific chemical spill, we should report that. The little side panel here gives us some of the methods to follow for that. At a minimum, we should contact 911 and tell them about the spill, but we want to remember the 3 C's when we get to that. We want to control the spill, contain or control any sort of injury that could be happening, contain the spill, and then work on cleaning it up however we can.

But there's lots of information in the panel on the side here as far as how to do that. And the emergency responders can help us with that as well. I know Linda mentioned fuel tanks or gas cans floating around and that sort of thing, which can lead to explosion hazards. When it comes to the chemicals. I know Chad mentioned some stuff about what potentially chemicals could be in the water, so all of this stuff we need to, to keep in mind as well. And then I wanted to hit on, um, as a, as a final thing when we look at this is grain. We know this is going to be a huge stressor for our grain farmers. We had the livestock stressors earlier on, but looking at the grain handling and grain stressors that we have up there. We need to assume that any grain that has touched floodwater is contaminated because we don't know what's in the water. So these grains need to be destroyed.

We don't want them to make it into either cattle feed or human feed strains. And I'm sure the cooperatives and the collection areas will be testing these for that, but we want to try to prevent from overburdening those systems. And we do know from some research that when we store grain and it's flooded, the moisture really doesn't travel too far up into the grain, maybe more than a foot. So the grain that's above the flood line would still be usable, but we can't take it out of the bin in the normal process or we'd be passing it through the contaminated. So we'll have to have different methods of removing, uh, that grain. So having people that have done this in the past, or things like grain vacuums, we can suck off the top, then we won't have to risk contamination of the, the grain that may still potentially be good at the top of it.

We want to make sure that we don't start any of the components. Again, we have those electrical hazards to talk about in the stored grain, but we want to make sure we're not aerating the bins. We think maybe we can dry it out, but in that case, we may just be sending contaminants through the bin, um, or risking harm to somebody that's touching the components when it's energized. Um, so we want to have all of that again inspected and make sure that it's all good structurally, which we'll get to in a minute, as well as from the electrical side. There are companies out there that do salvage operations that can help with that. We know when we talk about personal protection, things like other toxins that could be in that grain, um, and we know that the grain that was wet will be molded, um, even by the time the water's receded out of it.

Like Chad did mention, having cooler weather will help with slowing that process, but that process is still going to occur.

Natalie: I just put something—

Unknown: so beyond the, um, sort of the, the, the grain itself, thinking about the structures We know that when things get wet, they're going to swell. The swelling of the corn and the swelling of the soybeans— soybeans tend to swell more than corn— they're going to damage those structures, which can end up shearing off bolts or elongating holes. So once we do get the grain out of there, we need to look at this stuff. But even before we get to the grain, making sure those structures are stable before we start climbing in and on and working around them. So we want to make sure we look for some— those signs of failure. We also know that the foundations can be deformed from it, whether they shifted or floated, so, or deteriorated in some way. So making sure again that the grain bin is not going to collapse when we start working around it.

So we want to make sure we have those inspected and potentially even engineering evaluations of those, especially the larger bins that we're seeing these days on agricultural operations. So inspecting all the parts, the electrical wiring, not energizing the wet components, all of these are going to ensure our safety as well as those working with us. Once we do get it all cleaned out, we want to make sure now we have to disinfect those facilities. So whether it's grain storage or feed storage or those type of areas, that are going to now potentially have molds and other contaminants in them from that black or gray water. So sort of a quick action list that we— that has been presented to us, taking— looking at getting rid of that power to all structures before we start doing anything.

If there's water lines or other type of where the— where the good grain and bad grain are separated, looking at the insu— you know, what our insurance carrier recommends before we start doing that. Again, we know the financial risks and the financial part of this is going to lead to much stress later on, if not the stress that we've already seen and Linda has mentioned. We want to have that good grain removed. There's some great materials out there. The Nebraska Department of Agriculture has some. On what to, how to dispose of the damaged grain and hay. We want to disinfect those and then make sure we, before we feed any of what we consider the good grain, to have that evaluated before we start using it. And then finally, with the grain salvage, there may be some salvage available out of some of it if it has been tested.

We need to make sure if we're reconditioning grain that it's done with the consent of the FDA. And then there are some different alternatives you have to deal with that: drying the grain, feeding it, or turning it into silage because of the high moisture content, which can be done in bunkers and bags. So there's a few resources I'm slowly going to page through here at the end of my presentation so they're on the video and people can see them. Some of them have been mentioned before. I work— like I said, Bruce talked about the flood webpage from UNL Extension is great. The EDEN Network is another one that I saw come up in some places. The Extension Disaster Education Network is another good one. And then the extension.org or eXtension has a whole flood page.

The UNL Extension has some great materials on flooded homes as well, and these apply And some of the principles I talked about today came from these resources. Same thing with pesticide storage. The University of Wisconsin has a great sheet that's put up on the National Ag Safety Database. Colorado State University, through EDEN, has some great information on handling livestock in the events of flooding, both during and post-flood. And then the resources on the flooded grain. UNL CropWatch just put out an article yesterday that some of this information came from, from some of our colleagues in Iowa. There's other from— in eXtension or extension.org again on managing that flooded grain bins. And then the disposal sheet from the Nebraska Department of Agriculture in dealing with disposing of damaged grain and hay.

And that's all I have for my presentation, so I welcome questions and comments as we go through this. I do want to mention my support as well from the Central State Center for Ag Safety and Health and all the collaborators I have.

Natalie: Thank you, Dr. Yoder, for that wealth of information. And, um, we certainly have the ability to also reach out to the participants with additional resources that aren't listed on the materials section. We really appreciate that. Next up is Dr. Tina Czajek, and she's the Associate Professor, the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at the University of Nebraska in Kearney. And thank you, Dr. Czajek, for joining us on a very important issue of mental health as we relate to the flooding episode.

Unknown: You bet. Thanks so much, Natalie. So my presentation will just be a little bit different than the ones that you've heard that have been really excellent. I know I've learned a lot as I've listened. And so my role here is on kind of the behavioral health side or the emotional impact. Linda started off her, our webinar here talking a little bit about how she's seen people go through a variety of stages as this crisis has been unfolding for, for those of us in Nebraska and Iowa. And so I'm going to take a look at what behavioral health things may be occurring, and then just some ways that people can cope with this as they can go on and do all the things that need to be done to recover.

And so, I work as a mental health professional in Nebraska, I'm also a professor and work for the Behavioral Health Education Center of Nebraska, just to get services out to the rural communities, which are often lacking. And so, when we take a look at what has been going on in our area here with the flooding. There's been a couple things that have jumped out at me as I've seen the images, and I'm trying here to get my slides to go forward and they're not for some reason. So, oh, there we go. All right, so this, you know, as we've been flooded here in Nebraska with images of what this flooding has done, to our neighbors and our family and friends. Some things have really stuck out and it's almost overwhelming. And I pulled a few pictures here.

This one really caught my eye because this is a family, a 5-generation farm family, and they were flooded, the ice jam when the Spencer Dam broke up in northern Nebraska, it really just pretty much destroyed their whole operation. And the thing about this family is, this is the 5th generation of farmers on this land. The gentleman there in the picture, he doesn't have children, he's devoted his whole life to the farm and everything is gone. And so you think about the grief and the loss that some people are feeling as they're going through this tragedy. And it's just a real human toll that has really touched me. And there are a lot of pictures of other things that I chose not to put up here because they're pretty disturbing.

When the flood swept through and livestock were lost and gone and there's, there are people's animals and livestock that are just, that are gone, you know, that have floated away, and those images are very disturbing to see. And so some of the natural disaster reactions that happen that are very common: disbelief and shock, fear and anxiety about the future. There is kind of this very initial stage of almost being numb and a disbelief that this is happening. People can start feeling kind of, as Linda said, kind of getting into that irritable or angry stage, feeling sad and depressed, and the huge thing is feeling very powerless. Natural disasters really show us that, you know, we don't have a lot of control over things that we sometimes think that we do, and so this feeling of being powerless can sometimes lead to a very hopeless place.

There can be crying for no apparent reason, in quotations, because there is reason. But it feels like it comes out of nowhere as you're trying to recover and do the things you need to do to get back on your feet. Headaches, back pain, stomach issues, we're gonna have some physical manifestations of our emotional difficulties. You know, and not only, you know, as you look at that, I'm sure there's lots of back pain and headaches just from the hard physical labor that's gonna have to happen going forward. And so as you physically are exhausted and hurting, that also takes a huge toll on your emotional well-being as well. Those two things are very much linked and connected.

The nightmares, difficulty sleeping, especially if you've had seen things that are very disturbing as you've gone through these natural disasters, you know, that can be a real issue as if you then are exhausted from working, having difficulty sleeping, and you're not getting good sleep sleep. The one, the last thing there on the list, increased use of substances. Many people tend to cope with some of these issues by increasing the use of a substance to relax or to, you know, just to get through, and then that creates its own set of issues. And so when I talk about behavioral health, I just wanted to be really clear about what that is. So when we talk about behavioral health, it's really our sense of well-being. Our emotional well-being, our ability to function in day-to-day life, our concept of ourself, our resiliency, and it also does include substance use disorders.

So, you know, those things are all packaged together when we talk about behavioral health. And those that are in the agriculture industry and rural ways of making a living, there's also several other things that tend to be risk factors for people with their behavioral health in terms of uniqueness to agriculture. And so when we have this natural disaster, it just piles up on top of an already sometimes vulnerable population. And what I mean by that are people in agriculture face some unique risk factors for behavioral health concerns. You know, things like being exposed to some chemicals that can lead to changes in brain structure and lead to depression, a lot of stress, a lot of worry, and like I said, lack of control, poor health. Typically, farmers and ag workers are very hardworking and sometimes don't take very good care of themselves or go to the doctor as much as they should.

Another kind of common factor, risk factor, is just lack of access to services. There's, you know, tends to be a shortage of behavioral health providers in our rural communities, and so there's not always places to go. There's a huge financial risk factor, and this is only going to be compounded as we go forward in this disaster and any disaster when we realize the financial toll that this is going to take on people and their way of living. And so There's many things, I guess, we want to be aware of as we're moving forward and recovering from the flooding effects. And you see here on the screen this picture of this farmer feeding his cattle, you know, in water, doing everything he can to make sure his livestock is taken care of. And the immediate you know, people are just taking care of what needs to be taken care of right now.

And so there's many stages or waves of disaster effects that happen for people's mental health and wellness. And so right now, I would say that we're in what is called the heroic stage or phase, and that's where there's a high level of activity. People are really putting into motion, you know, getting things done.

Many people are coming into the state and helping with things, you know, there's been airdrops of hay that have happened, the National Guard, and you know, that, that's really amazing, and it's, it's very awesome, I guess, to see, and so that's what we would call the heroic phase, where people are feeling like, you know, we can tackle this, and that leads to the honeymoon phase, where there's lots of optimism that we're going to recover, and And in our state, we're seeing lots of things like Nebraska Strong, and you know, together we're going to get through this, and just really some great things that are happening that help people kind of go on day to day and do what they need to do.

That— these stages last for only really a few weeks or maybe a month, a couple months, and then we start to go into what's called the disillusionment phase, and that phase is where that optimism starts slowly waning as the grind of trying to recover from this just keeps going on and on, and maybe we're not sleeping as well and, and we're getting tired and exhausted and not seeing the progress that we had hoped. And so this is where, as mental health professionals, we get really concerned. And so for, for me, all of this stuff that's happening now is great, but where the real work is going to come and where the real concern is is gonna happen is about maybe 3 to 6 months, going on for probably a year or two after. And that's, you know, we have, that's when the effects, the full effects are seen of what people are going through.

And so this is again when substance use can really increase, where we see lots of stress, lots of depression. This is when we get most concerned about people, suicidal, kind of concerns because people feel stuck for such a long time. And so that any, any things can start becoming triggers for other stress. So if you, you know, you're dealing with this, but then maybe also you have a health event in your family or some other issues come up, it just triggers that and compounds the— some of these other things. And so what we hope to get to, obviously, for everyone is the reconstruction phase, which is where we're in recovery. We're in recovery from the event and we feel like we're back on our feet and have some hope again. And so, you know, there are many things that folks can do to keep themselves well, and that's what we want.

We don't want to get to that disillusionment phase where we're feeling hopeless and feeling like choices are gone. And so tips for coping. What is really important is to talk about it and communicate your experience. So, you know, talking to family and friends, and others in your community that you're close to and communicate what you're experiencing, how maybe hard this is and how stressful it is. Do something to feel in control. So whatever you can do, you know, to take control of your situation, to do that and to focus on that, that, you know, this is what I got done today and this is what I can control, and let go of some of those things you can't control. Spending time with family and friends and Social support is really key. We're kind of all in this together, and that helps bolster each other in your emotional and mental reserves. Take care of yourself, sleep, eat, exercise.

You know, I heard Linda say too that people are getting really tired because they're up all night watching, you know, the other things that need to happen and making sure community's safe. So we have to take time though to take care of ourselves. We will, will not be good to anybody if we're not well. And so, it's the old adage of putting your oxygen mask on before you can help others. Limiting exposure to images of the disaster, there is a point where you get saturated and need to kind of back off of those things, just so you're not repeatedly exposing yourself to very stressful and upsetting things. Taking a thing at a time, and doing something positive, That— I read an article about a family in the Sandhills, and they had very little time as the waters rise to get their livestock taken care of and other things.

In the article, the gentleman mentioned that there was not going to be any fun had for at least a year until next summer. And that concerned me because we need that. We need downtime, and we need to do things that bring us back some sense of joy. And so even if it is hard to make times to go do things that are positive and that you enjoy doing, um, of course avoiding drugs, excessive drinking, and not to make major life decisions until the major impact has passed. Sometimes that's hard because I know decisions need to be made, and when that does, to make sure you get lots of good input, because sometimes when we make decisions when we're not at our best thinking ability, they end up being not very good decisions.

And then the last thing is to ask for help when needed, and that is so important that, you know, if those strong feelings won't go away after, you know, 4 to 6 weeks, if you're feeling extremely stressed, depressed, you know, just wore out and kind of worried, or if you're worried about somebody in that capacity, maybe they've made some statements that concern you about things not being worth it anymore, make sure that you ask, get some help. And, you know, for yourself, ask for help, or maybe you need to be the voice to speak up for others and ask them to get some help or to go with you to make sure that they're okay. Many mental health providers obviously can help with this issue if they're in your community. If not, reach out to a clergy person, a pastor, a minister. They're very good resources to connect you to places where you can they can get help.

And also physicians, nurses, medical professionals in the community are also good places of support. And, you know, I really— this image on the computer here, I really love that, you know, we're out there, everybody's helping each other out, trying to help the livestock, just get them to a place of safety. We need to remember that for ourselves and our fellow human beings, that we need to get people also to places of where they feel safe and comfortable. And so a few resources here. Nebraska has a rural response hotline that's really good. They're very in tune to the agricultural needs and the special things that go along with that. They can help with a multitude of things from behavioral health to legal issues to all other kinds of social issues. And then a couple of national hotlines there for people who might need help.

And I will just say as well that my contact information is there if there is anything I can do I can do to help, and help us recover from this and really to be stronger for it, I'd be glad to do that. So thank you so much.

Natalie: Thank you so much, Dr. Chizek. I know that there was just so much information to cover. You did an excellent job. And certainly we wanted to end with this topic on the behavioral health because we know that there are people that are going to be needing assistance. We do have some time for questions. We have gone a little bit over our time, but that is to nobody's fault. There's just a lot of material to cover. So we're going to go ahead and look at the chat box and see what we have. In the meantime, I'm going to just show you real quick on the materials section. We do have a guidance that I want to make sure you bring your attention to, and that is the piece from the CDC and USDA and make sure I'm presenting here. It's on the interim guidance for protecting workers from livestock and poultry wastewater and sludge.

This was actually done, thank you for making me the presenter there, Stacy. This was actually done last summer in response to the flooding in the Carolinas, and because there was a lot of livestock operations, and so I really recommend that everybody take some time read it. It's, it's well written, it's well developed, and it's got some technical pieces, but I think it's an important overview, and it is something that the CDC has developed. So please access that along with the other materials that we provided for you. I'm going to go back to the chat box and see if there's any other questions. There was— let's go back to the top here. We want to make sure— there's a question about having more information about saturated basements and ground pressures. I think there's some concern about, you know, when, when is it okay to reenter flooded area?

And so I don't know if any of the presenters would like to, to address that issue related to more information on saturated basements and ground pressures. The other, the same person also asked the question about if there's an optimized time to enter and assess a flooded area.

Unknown: Neville, this is Aaron, and maybe David can help us more from the civil engineering side of things, but I know members of my community have been relying on the local authorities when it comes to when you can enter back into places. They need to make sure that the scene is clear. I know the State Police have said they've been spending an extra amount of time keeping people away from places they shouldn't be, that people aren't very good at listening to that. So your local authorities can tell you a lot about that. And then the same with the, the basement structure. I'm not an expert in that, but realizing that that is an issue and then seeking guidance. I know home builders know a lot about that. So if you have a builder, if you have a homeowners association, they would be able to help you with that.

But in more rural areas, I think that's a place where maybe our Extension Service might be able to help us a little bit in doing that. So I don't have a definite answer. I know the CDC and Googling some stuff about that earlier, there's some other resources out there. I just didn't list any of those, but we can search those out and send them to you for you to include on your resource page.

Natalie: Yes, I'm happy to do that. And just as a side note, all the— I know you've had a lot of different resources shared with you today, those of you attending. What we'll do is we'll send up a follow-up email to you with, with these, with this list as well, because of the materials section. We have about 6 resources, but there is additional information, so you can plan on getting that. I have a question for Dr. DeBoer, in terms of the areas that haven't flooded yet, but they anticipate flooding, I noticed in your presentation you talked about preparing the wellhead. Can you speak a little bit about that in terms of, do you envision that if, is that a guidance right now for folks that have well water, they know that there's potential for flooding, that they act now? To prepare that wellhead to protect it? And is there success with that in terms of preventive protection?

And I know you're muted right now, so I don't know if you have the— if you're trying to speak, but if you have the ability to unmute your mic. I'm not sure if Dr. Dvorak is able to still join us, 'cause it looks like he might have got bumped offline. But I don't know if any of the other presenters have the ability to respond to that in terms of, is there a recommendation that before flooded waters come your way, that there is work to be done to check the wellhead? I'm gonna go ahead and Alan, I'm going to unmute you as well. I know you've done work in this area, so yep, you're unmuted anyways.

Unknown: This is Aaron again, and I know there are guidelines out there. I know in our community they started to sandbag around them when the floodwaters were coming to prevent that, building up berms. Most of them, and I know most of the guidelines show you, you want the surface waters to be sloped away from them. But when floodwaters come, the best that I've seen them doing, they were digging trenches around them, they were sandbagging around them, as well as building other earthen dams around them to try to prevent that surface water from getting in the wells.

Natalie: Thank you, Aaron. It looks like Bruce Dvorak is trying to join us again here. It looks like there might be some difficulty with the access, but certainly we can hold on. I unmuted you, so if you have the ability to— there you go. Looks like you're on mute.

Unknown: Thank you. Sorry, I had a problem with my web connection.

Natalie: No problem. So the question was— my question was, and Aaron addressed it a little bit, I noticed in your slides you talked about preparing the well and coming before flood waters come, and I know that there's a lot of states that are predicting floods, and certainly we're not out of the woods yet. So is there any— do you find that there's success in getting this work done ahead of time, and is it something that something that farmers can do on their own, or do you feel they need to bring— if there's anticipation that there's going to be floods happening on that farm, do they have to bring an expert to do that, or is that something they can do themselves?

Unknown: I think this is something there's quite a bit they can do themselves. Obviously, as kind of Aaron mentioned, kind of assessing their own situation, determining, you know, do they need to do something related to their well itself, sandbagging, as well as just preparing themselves for the situation after the flood. How are they going to have safe water if their well does become inundated? Preparing themselves to do some sampling. So really, there's a wide range of resources individuals can go to, to try to assess their own well, to kind of look at their vulnerability, as well as just prepare for for what I hate to say is the worst. And I may mention, if it's an older well, one thing I would really encourage them to do if they have not had their well inspected by a certified well installer in the last several years, say the last 5 years, they really should try to do that.

That also will just do a tremendous amount to help them.

Natalie: Thank you. That's excellent advice. And the preparation piece too also makes us think about the personal protective equipment. I know, Linda, you talked about how difficult it is to actually access the equipment that you need. You know, you don't have a Home Depot down the road. So those areas that they're anticipating flooding in the future, certainly getting that personal protective equipment in that house ahead of time is important. I really appreciate everybody's time today. I don't see any questions come through at this point, any more questions, but for those folks that are presenters, feel free if you have anything you wanna add before we close the session, we'll go ahead and allow you to do that now.

Unknown: This is Bruce, I just may mention one thing, that in some cases, a community may announce their public or community drinking water is safe, Even if that happens, we need to be sure those on domestic wells realize that really has no relevance to their specific well.

Natalie: Excellent guidance, thank you. Thank you, everybody. I know you've hung on for a while here. And just as a reminder, this webinar has been recorded, and so it will be available on our website. Probably in about an hour or so. So for those folks who missed it, they can certainly access it on their own time. And please reach out to any one of us if you have any questions or need assistance. And again, thank you presenters for coming on such short notice. Really appreciate all the work you've done. Everybody have a good day, stay safe, and we'll be thinking and praying Thanks for listening, podcast.

Shay

Foulk: If you have any questions on the resources that were mentioned here, or if there's something you can't find, certainly feel free to reach out to myself. That's agronguy@gmail.com. I should be able to steer you in the right direction. Also, like I said at the beginning, be sure to check out the AgriSafe Network Learning Labs. There's lots of great information on there that can hopefully help you as you move forward. And again, we're hoping and praying that you won't have to deal with some of these major flooding issues, but we think it's incredibly important. Be sure to share this with anybody that you think may be affected by, by floods moving forward, and we will catch you next time on the Ag View Pitch.