EEE Outdoor Ban Lifted for UMass and the Town of Amherst

By Rodney Rollins on October 19, 2012

I can’t lie – my day was made when, on Monday, October 15th, there was an e-mail sent to all students by UMass Environmental Health & Safety to declare “Nighttime activities OK following hard frost”. The email reads as follows:

“Criteria for a hard frost were met during the weekend, and as a result the campus has lifted its ban of outdoor activities from dusk to dawn that has been in effect due to a high risk for Eastern Equine Encephalitis and West Nile Virus, serious mosquito-borne illnesses.Outdoor activities may now resume since the temperature fell below 28 degrees for a minimum of two hours. The Town of Amherst is also lifting its nighttime activity restrictions.”

According to the Hampshire Gazette, on August 31 a horse died in Belchertown, Massachusetts. On September 6th it had been confirmed that the animal had died because of Eastern Equine Encephalitis, also known as EEE. This is what forced UMass to take action putting a ban on any outdoor activities from after dusk until dawn on September 12th. (More info at http://www.gazettenet.com/2012/09/08/caution-urged-after-eee-found-in-valley).

Since that time, many intramural sports have had their games moved to different times or even postponed indefinitely. I can personally speak on this because my game has been postponed three times so far this semester. This outdoor activity ban has even effected such events as the Autumnal Equinox viewing!

Now that the ban is lifted, all scheduled outdoor activities that are yet to come will not be affected. The Town of Amherst and all of the schools in the 5 College consortium have also removed all of their similar restrictions.

According to the Daily Collegian, this hard frost has luckily came just as the Massachusetts Department of Health found two new cases of the West Nile virus in Boston. Hopefully this will mean the end of these occurrences, but if we have another mild winter, it will give room for another large batch of mosquitoes to increase the chances of these diseases being spread.

*Photo acquired from google*