Government shutdown puts squeeze on health, safety

• Cutbacks and furloughs hamper investigations
• Domestic violence shelters threatened
• Efforts to improve vital weather forecasting on hold

Air-traffic controllers are still monitoring the skies and the FBI is still searching for bad guys, but serious health and safety issues remain as the government shutdown grinds into its second week.

Cutbacks and furloughs are hampering investigations ranging from a fatal subway accident in Washington, the heart of the shutdown crisis, to a salmonella outbreak that has sickened people in at least 18 Western states. Domestic violence shelters are threatened, mine safety could be, and efforts to improve vital weather forecasting are on hold.

"Every day that the shutdown continues, we are going to see increased risk to ... the public and workers and people who are particularly vulnerable," said Ronald White, director of regulatory policy at the non-profit Center for Effective Government. "There is a whole scope of protections that are deteriorating as the shutdown continues."

In 18 states, 278 people have been sickened in a salmonella outbreak linked to chicken produced in California. Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the consumer advocacy Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was flying blind when its investigation began. The reason: The shutdown forced closure of PulseNet, a national computer network that connects 87 public health laboratories and looks for trends in food-borne illness outbreaks.

"They had been trying to work on this outbreak for a week, doing information exchange by phone and e-mail and found the volume of data was too large," DeWaal said. She said the CDC informed her that seven of the eight PulseNet employees had been brought back to work and that PulseNet was back in business Tuesday.

When a bus crash killed eight people in Tennessee on Oct. 2, the National Transportation Safety Board said it could not send anyone to investigate the crash because of the government shutdown. Days later, when an explosion in a tunnel killed a Washington Metro worker, the NTSB again declined to send a team.

The NTSB issued a statement saying, "Due to a lapse in funding, NTSB staff are furloughed. The agency can only engage in those activities necessary to address imminent threats to the safety of human life or for the protection of property."

About 2,000 domestic violence agencies, partially funded through the Office on Violence Against Women and other federal programs, are running on reserves and many could close next week, said Cindy Southworth, vice president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

"Our shelters and our hotlines are at risk of shutting down imminently," Southworth said. "This is a terrifying time to work in domestic violence prevention."

When Tropical Storm Karen threatened, about 200 Federal Emergency Management Agency staff members were recalled from furlough to prepare. At least 100 of them will have to be refurloughed.

"They are having to, under less than optimal situations, still respond to Mother Nature, which doesn't stop just because the government has shut down," President Obama said in praising the FEMA employees.

Noting that Tropical Storm Karen dissipated, Obama said, "We dodged a bullet there."

J. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society, warns of other weather concerns. National Weather Service meteorologists are still watching the weather, he notes in a recent blog post, but after Superstorm Sandy struck a year ago, "there was an outcry in some circles about the quality of U.S. weather models."

Shepherd says the United States has made gains, but "many of our colleagues working on U.S. weather model improvements are at home. If the shutdown persists, it would be hard not to wonder if some improvement is being delayed that could save a life in 2015."

The Mine Safety and Health Administration has about 40% of its staff working and is conducting limited mine inspections. There were three coal mine fatalities from Oct. 4-6, days after the shutdown began. The coal industry had not had three consecutive days of fatal accidents in more than 10 years.

"Three miners killed on three consecutive days is extremely troubling," Joseph Main, assistant secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health, said in a statement. "The fact that that this occurred over the weekend, when there may be a greater expectation an MSHA inspector would not be present, is a red flag."

Some FEMA workers have come back to work. On Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack deemed "essential" the employees at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's (APHIS) Center for Veterinary Biologics, which is responsible for ensuring veterinarians and farmers have access to the vaccinations they need to keep their flocks and herds healthy.

Contributing: Meghan Hoyer, Elizabeth Weise, David Jackson