  Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are an emerging class of bright, highly dispersed
radio pulses. Recent work by Thornton et al. (2013) has revealed a population
of FRBs in the High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) survey at high Galactic
latitudes. A variety of progenitors have been proposed including cataclysmic
events at cosmological distances, Galactic flare stars, and terrestrial radio
frequency interference. Here we report on a search for FRBs at intermediate
Galactic latitudes ($-15^{\circ}$ $< b <$ 15$^{\circ}$) in data taken as part
of the HTRU survey. No FRBs were discovered in this region. Several effects
such as dispersion, scattering, sky temperature and scintillation decrease the
sensitivity by more than 3$\sigma$ in $\sim$20\% of survey pointings. Including
all of these effects, we exclude the hypothesis that FRBs are uniformly
distributed on the sky with 99\% confidence. This low probability implies that
additional factors -- not accounted for by standard Galactic models -- must be
included to ease the discrepancy between the detection rates at high and low
Galactic latitudes. A revised rate estimate or another strong and heretofore
unknown selection effect in Galactic latitude would provide closer agreement
between the surveys' detection rates. The dearth of detections at low Galactic
latitude disfavors a Galactic origin for these bursts.
