Hillsborough investigates Legionnaire's disease outbreak

Six weeks ago, Gene Swanson and his wife Betty left their northern Michigan resort town of Cadillac for a new life at the Country Meadows mobile home park in Plant City.

Swanson, 76, spent his life as a tool-and-die maker, running his own shop for the last 14 years, said his son, Jeff Swanson. An avid skeet shooter and golfer, Swanson came to Florida to retire.

The retirement didn’t last long. Swanson contracted Legionnaires’ Disease and died Saturday, according to the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office. Two other people at the mobile home contracted the disease as well, say county health officials, who are now scrambling to figure out how the residents contracted the bacterial disease and whether anyone else may have it.

It is not known yet whether Swanson, who had other “significant health issues,” succumbed from the disease, according Sherry Filippone, a forensic investigator for the medical examiner’s office. She said it will be up to his doctor at South Florida Baptist Hospital, where he died, to sign off on a cause of death. Jeff Swanson would not comment about the role the disease played in his father’s death.

But the mostly elderly residents of the 799-unit mobile home park are worried, said James Butterworth, president of the Country Meadows Residents Association.

“They have been calling me constantly” since the announcement was made, he said.

“I am concerned,” said Carol Terrell, the association’s treasurer. “I would like to know how they contracted it. Who wouldn’t be concerned?”

Steve Huard, spokesman for the Hillsborough County Health Department, said investigators are trying to find out if more people have the disease. The incubation period for the disease is about two weeks; the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are the most vulnerable.

“There is a potential for more people to have it,” he said. “We are really looking to see if more people come down with it.”

Legionnaires’ Disease is one of the more than 35 species of the Legionellae bacteria, which are found naturally in the environment, usually in water, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The bacteria grow best in warm water, like the kind found in hot tubs, cooling towers, hot water tanks, large plumbing systems or parts of the air-conditioning systems of large buildings.

The disease is most well-known in the United States from an outbreak of a mysterious illness during a 1976 convention of the American Legion at a hotel in Philadelphia, where 34 people died and more than 200 were sickened.

People most often contract Legionnaires' disease when they breathe in a mist or vapor that has been contaminated with the bacteria, according to the CDC.

The disease, said Huard, is not spread from person to person.

Friday, health department officials visited the mobile home park and closed down the pool area because the chlorine levels were not up to standards, Huard said.

Country Meadows officials did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Thomas Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control, said anyone at the mobile home park who feels sick should seek medical advice from a doctor.

“I would encourage people, whether they lived next door to someone who died or not, if you are sick with fever and have difficulty breathing and you think you need to go to the doctor to see a doctor.’’ haltman@tampatrib.com