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The work is far from done, but if an avian flu pandemic breaks out, Warren County will be better off than most.

Barbara White of the Pennsylvania Department of Health handed a copy of the county's Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan to County Commissioner Terry Hawk on Tuesday.

It will be on a shelf in case it's needed.

But it's not the kind of thing the commissioners hope to refer to often.

"I hope it's something that can truly sit on the shelf and never be used," said White, who has led monthly meetings of the pandemic preparedness planning committee for about the last year.

The result of that effort is the plan, a 43-page document that outlines and provides a level of detail into the "actions to be taken by the government and citizens of Warren County to respond to the threat of or danger presented by pandemic influenza or other extremely contagious disease."

Despite the hope that the document is never needed, the commissioners are grateful for it. "We all really appreciate all the work you have put into this," Hawk told members of the committee.

Knowing the county has a plan in place should be a comfort, not a cause for alarm, for county residents. "We don't want it to be a fear factor," said Karen Coombs, Warren General Hospital's director of community relations. "It should be a comfort to the citizens."

"There is a very strong plan in place, taking into consideration the state, federal, and world organization recommendations," she said. "The plan was put forth based on the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS) requirements."

"The significance of the plan is, it gives us a starting point and some direction in the event of a pandemic," said Terry Campbell of the Warren County Emergency Management Agency.

With the plan in place, the committee hopes to avoid adding confusion and lack of planning to what would certainly be a crisis situation.

Providing that backbone structure was the purpose of the committee. "The mission was to fully support the community by working together in an integrated pandemic response effort," Emergency Management Coordinator Todd Lake said.

Although the committee celebrated completion of the plan, it continued preparedness efforts during Tuesday's meeting.

"Now that we've got the plan, we need to exercise that and each component within it," Campbell said.

He said the county needs a "full-scale exercise" to check for rough spots and see how well the plan can work. "That's where we're going to learn just how good it is," Campbell said. "The culmination is exercising it to see what the result is going to be."

Campbell and other committee members expressed an interest in observing another county's exercise.

In addition to practicing, the committee is looking to educate the public.

"Now we have to address the outreach," Hawk said.

"The general public has got to be educated," Campbell said.

People in homes with Internet access can visit sites like www.ready.gov and www.readypa.org to learn important information related to pandemics and other large-scale emergencies.

So the committee is directing its outreach to the younger and older segments of the population. "I think the outreach is going to focus on children, schools, and the elderly," Hawk said.

Churches, agencies, and schools are some of the groups the committee hopes will provide volunteer help for its outreach.

"The Area Agency on Aging office could be a fantastic way to get the word out," Campbell said.

Simply having a plan in place puts Warren County ahead of the curve in preparedness, but there are other factors that give the county an edge.

"We are unique," White said. "We have one hospital and one school district."

That makes coordinating any response much easier.

The sense of county-as-community is another advantage. "We have so much ahead of other places," Lake said. "We know who all the key people are."

The committee decided to continue to meet every other month beginning in November.