he allowed that Well 7's chlorinator had not been functioning properly, he did not disclose that Well 7 had in fact been operating without any chlorinator at all. With the input of Koebel and Steve Burns, an engineer with the Highway 9 project's consulting firm, it was decided that Burns's firm would develop an action plan to remediate the water contamination. On the basis of this remediation plan, meeting participants decided that it would not be necessary to declare a state of emergency in Walkerton. Despite this declaration, publicizing of the epidemic, and the Boil Water Advisory, local hospitals continued to treat gastroenteritis patients during the last week of May at numbers more than double typical ER throughput. Hospital staff were forced to take emergency measures, with elective and deferrable treatments redirected to other hospitals and out-of-town medical staff being pressed into service. By May 24, there had been four patient deaths and the Walkerton hospital and the BGOSHU were playing host to three epidemiologists from various arms of Health Canada. 27 people had developed HUS, a serious and potentially deadly complication of E. coli infection. The full death toll for the outbreak was initially reported as seven, but later revised to six. Aftermath While the community attempted to recover from the events of May 2000, anger and blame ran high. On May 25, Dr. Murray McQuigge had made a public statement saying that in his opinion, dissemination of information to the community had been hampered by lack of disclosure of adverse Walkerton Public Utilities Commission (PUC) testing results, and patient deaths could have been prevented had disclosure been made earlier; by May 29, a $1 billion class-action lawsuit had been filed by community members similarly alleging that local officials had failed in their duty to notify the community. Authorities from the Ontario Clean Water Agency took over operations at the Walkerton Public Utilities Commission on May 25 at the request of Mayor Thomson. The next day, the Ontario Provincial Police launched an investigation into the causes of the outbreak, followed within days by a coroner's inquest and an environmental investigation. During the outbreak, both Stan and Frank Koebel denied any wrongdoing and firmly held that the water at Walkerton was safe to drink. However, as the outbreak grew in severity the two were eventually part of the criminal investigation into the incident, and, as a result, both would eventually