Countywide : Park Workers Cope With Hantavirus Risk

While Orange County officials anxiously wait to find out whether the deadly hantavirus is lurking in local rodents, county park workers are striving to keep themselves safe and visitors calm.

None of the county’s 18 regional parks, nor the sprawling Cleveland National Forest, have posted warning signs or literature about the virus, but some employees say visitors are concerned about the airborne virus.

“A lot of people have been asking about it and how it works,” said Rick Keller, a naturalist at the 12-acre Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary in Mojeska Canyon. “People are definitely aware of it.”

In particular, the sanctuary’s live, caged deer mouse--the species that carries the virus linked to 33 deaths nationwide--has drawn some wary stares, Keller said.

“Everybody wants to know if it’s the kind that carries it,” Keller said. He quickly added that the rodent in question was captured on Santa Catalina Island and has been in captivity for more than a year. “The odds of it having it are pretty slim,” he said.

Federal researchers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are analyzing tissue samples from deer mice captured in a rural area near San Clemente.

While it is confirmed that the rodents were infected with a member of the hantavirus family, it’s not known yet whether the mice carried the dangerous strain.

County parks official Tim Miller said any posted public advisory, such as the ones displayed several years ago warning of ticks spreading Lyme disease, would come only if and when county health officials deemed them necessary.

Vector control ecologist Jim Webb said such a warning would not be issued until more conclusive information is available.

The public response to the potential health problem has been far easier for officials to track than the vexing virus itself, which has yet to be isolated.

Callers jammed phone lines at county agencies in the days following the announcement that five deer mice in the county tested positive, and some South County high school officials transferred three cross-country track meets out of the rural Carbon Canyon Regional Park this week for fear of the virus.

Cathy Glasgow, supervisor at the 60-acre Oak Canyon Nature Center in Anaheim Hills, said that same apprehension is apparent among her co-workers.

Employees at the facility, which is run by the city of Anaheim, have been informed about safety precautions, but the center’s rural setting makes it difficult to avoid contact with rodents.

“I’ve seen (rodent droppings) around my desk before,” Glasgow said. The hantavirus is transmitted via air through a fine dust emitted by deer mice droppings.

“I don’t know that we’d ever be able to mouse-proof the building. But we’ll just have to wait until we get more information until we do anything more drastic,” Glasgow said.

While Glasgow said her staff will soon have face masks available for times they traverse through the preserve’s areas of heavy rodent population, at least one employee at a county facility dismissed the need for such precautions.

A ranger at O’Neill Regional Park, who asked not to be identified, tersely shrugged off the possible danger: “What are we supposed to do, wear masks around all day?”