By Brenna Angel
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Lexington Fayette County health department, state health inspectors, and emergency management officials got a personal tour of the Kentucky Horse Park Wednesday as the agencies prepare for the World Equestrian Games. Health Department spokesman Kevin Hall says an emergency operations format will be used throughout the course of the games.
"We're going to have our environmental health inspectors here making sure that the food vendors are safe and following the codes. We'll be doing that daily. We're also going to have our epidemiology staff here making sure there's no disease outbreaks, so we'll be doing surveillance of that."
Hall says the Fayette County Health Department has experience dealing with large crowds in working the Rolex events and the Bluegrass State Games.
"We're familiar with events like this. Now obviously we've not been involved with anything to this scale, but keeping people safe is what we do every day, and we feel like this will be a hectic two weeks, but it's going to be just another day on the job for the health department workers."
The World Equestrian Games kick off September 25. Some 200,000 to 400,000 people are expected to visit the horse park during WEG's two-week run.