The air carried a chill when Frederick Lehmkuhl of Simi Valley pulled his van into a Moorpark College parking lot early Friday and became the first person in line for Ventura County Public Health's drive-through flu vaccination clinic. With an hour to wait, he tuned the radio to his favorite station and pulled out his laptop.

Lehmkuhl used to get his annual flu shots from his employer, but now he's retired from the aerospace industry. Friday's clinic was a great opportunity to get the boost of protection at no charge, he said, and he didn't mind the wait.

"It's very convenient, and it's economical," Lehmkuhl said before he started his engine just after 8 a.m. and began maneuvering through one of the clinic's five stations.

Several hundred people received the vaccinations, in shot or nasal-spray form, to protect against this season's flu virus. The exercise was designed to help Ventura County Public Health officials understand how to best protect the public against a pandemic influenza, a terrorist attack or other public health emergency.

"It's important to practice, because in any kind of emergency situation, people's responses tend to freeze," said Public Health Director Linda Henderson. "When lives depend on you, you don't want to wait. You want to have it practiced."

Local, state, federal agencies

The clinic, a simulation of a mass vaccination effort, was the final piece of a three-day disaster training exercise for Ventura County Public Health employees. The drill began Wednesday with a scenario of a local hospital reporting a possible infectious disease outbreak, with numerous victims suffering flu-like symptoms that could be a pandemic influenza, Henderson said.

The drill was part of a statewide effort to test disaster preparedness. Local, state and federal agencies participated in drills and training exercises throughout the week as part of the fourth-annual Golden Guardian exercise.

"Every single drill or exercise you do, you learn something new," said Jay Alan, spokesman for the Governor's Office of Homeland Security, which coordinates Golden Guardian exercises. "You learn what's going well and what needs fixing."

The Ventura County drill offered public health employees a chance to test how they would make a request for and receive supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile, a cache of essential medication, vaccine and medical supplies maintained by the federal government at secret locations around the country.

In the event of a pandemic flu or other widespread infectious disease outbreak, county officials expect they would quickly run through local supplies of needed drugs or vaccine, if it is available, and would need to request additional help from the stockpile. They did that Wednesday, and by Thursday morning, a rented truck escorted by California Highway Patrol officers delivered four pallets of the requested flu vaccine to the Public Health Department's secure warehouse.

Drill lasted four hours

"Everything we have here is for starters, until the Strategic National Stockpile is delivered," said Diane Dobbins, manager of Health Department's Emergency Preparedness Office, during a tour of the warehouse before the delivery Thursday.

Friday morning, health officials set up a point-of-distribution center in the lower parking area at Moorpark College so they could test their system for mass vaccinations. County health workers could run 10 such distribution sites around the county if they needed to quickly vaccinate or medicate everyone in the region. The goal is to vaccinate the entire county population within four days, Dobbins said.

Friday's drill lasted only four hours, but plenty of cars curled past the field hockey and football fields as drivers lined up for the first test of the drive-through concept. More than 80 volunteers, including Moorpark College nursing students and members of the Disaster Aid Response Team and Community Emergency Response Team, worked the event alongside Public Health, the American Red Cross and other local agencies.

Students practice techniques

Student nurses, under supervision from their instructors or county medical professionals, interviewed patients and administered the vaccines, stretching into car windows or perching on running boards so they could access their patients easily.

"It's a great opportunity for community involvement and a good opportunity for the nursing students to practice their techniques," said Jamee D'Angelo, a member of the Moorpark College nursing faculty who supervised students and provided vaccines Friday. "This disaster set-up is pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime for the students."

Student David Linzey, 24, of Oxnard, who is enrolled in the Moorpark College/CSU Channel Islands nursing collaboration program to get his nursing bachelor's degree, said the event was a great way to get experience inoculating patients.

"There's a lot less opportunity to do this in hospitals, so this is great," he said. "The more volume you can do, the better."