The Impact on Emergency Department Visits for Respiratory Illness During the Southern California Wildfires

Introduction: In 2007 wildfires ravaged Southern California resulting in the largest evacuationdue to a wildfire in American history. We report how these wildfires affected emergencydepartment (ED) visits for respiratory illness.Methods: We extracted data from a Kaiser Permanente database for a single metropolitancommunity ED. We compared the number of visits due to respiratory illness at t ime intervalsof 2 weeks before and during the time when the fires were burnin g. We counted the totalnumber of patients with chief complaint of dyspnea, cough, and asthma and final internationalclassification of disease 9 coding diagnosis of asthma, bronchitis, chronic obstructivepulmonary disease and respiratory syndrome, and analyzed data for both total number andproportion of ED visits. We evaluated the data using Early Aberration Reporting Systemsoftware to determine significant single-visit increases compared to expected counts. We alsoanalyzed the average length of ED stay. Data on air quality were extracted from the http://www.airnow.gov site.Results: There were significant differences between pre-fire and fire period average visit countsfor the chief complaints of dyspnea and asthma. Dypnea complaints increased by 3.2 visits perday. During the fire the diagnoses of asthma increased significantly by 2.6 patients per day. Airquality reached air quality index values of 300, indicating very unhealthy conditions. Average EDlength of stay times remained unchanged during the fire period compared to the pre-fire period.Conclusion: The 2007 Southern California wildfires caused significant surges in the volume ofED patients seeking treatment for respiratory illness. Disaster plans should prepare for thesesurges when future wildfires occur.