The Norovirus Train Outbreak

    Back in the year 2009 my mom, both of my  kids and myself went on the yearly school field trip to ride the Durango Silverton Railroad. There were four classes plus their families on the train. I would say maybe 100 of us total, maybe more. We were in two portions of the train and other passengers in the other portion. I am not sure how many of them there were but when we stopped for lunch it looked like maybe 50 or so. I am telling the story from memory so numbers might not be exact....

    We had a wonderful day. We saw beautiful scenery, had a nice lunch and fun train ride. The train only goes to Cascade Canyon dung the winter months so we were on the train about 4 hours. Went back to school and everyone went home...it was a great trip!

    That night my youngest woke up vomiting, then my oldest woke up saying he felt sick. He is like me and fights vomiting so we both fought it but were in pain and had diarreah. None of us wanted food the next day. It was a long night. We were all so ill.

    The next mornig my mom called and asked if we had been sick. She said she had been so sick all night throwing up. I got calls from others who were also up all night throwing up 

     That Monday I had to return to work, I worked at teh school my kids atended. The kids stayed home. That day though there were not many kids at school. As the week went on there were kids carrying trash cans down the hallway. The health department came in and we found out we had Norovirus. We are not sure how we got it but all but one person on the entire train got sick from it. Then we took it to family members. They had to shut the school down to do some high power cleaning. 

     I learned a lot about  a virus I had never even heard of. It guess it is one of the cruise ship viruses....it can attack large groups of people. This is because the vomit is contagious. The spores get in the air and if you are near it and breathe them you will get sick. It is also contagious through contact. It is a strong virus and does not respond well to cleaners.  But what makes it worse is those spores. They thought that someone had gotten sick on the train, the spores got into the heater vents and we all became sick! 

    It was not fun, we were sick for several days and for weeks after the outbreak the custodians followed kids around wiping doors down every time they were touched. 

Norovirus

Cruise Ship Virus