Los Angeles Times - 07.03.2020

LATIMES.COM S A

to 17% plunge in cargo vol-
umes in the first quarter of
this year, as compared with
the first three months of 2019
— a drop of more than
500,000 container units.
Imports usually slow
around the Chinese New
Year, but shippers have can-
celed 60 vessel sailings for
the first quarter of this year
—nearly twice the normal
number. The 12 terminals
across the two ports have
been shutting down for days
at a time.
“The overall impact is not
only on the regional econo-
my, it is on the national econ-
omy,” said Mario Cordero,
executive director of the
Port of Long Beach.
“We are ground zero for
Asian imports. We were al-
ready down because of the
trade war. With the co-
ronavirus, we’ve gone from
uncertainty to potential
chaos.”
In the Los Angeles re-
gion, the pain is already
acute. Seroka pointed out
that 1 in 9 Southern Califor-
nia jobs are tied to the ports,
including people who work
on the docks, drive trucks
and move boxes in ware-
houses.
“That’s a million jobs,” he
said. “Less cargo means
fewer jobs. The truck drivers
are not pulling as much
freight. The longshoremen
are not being called out to
work as frequently as they
normally would be.”
At a time when job
growth is already slowing in
California — after a decade
of expansion — the co-
ronavirus threatens to make
things worse.
On the docks, work shifts
are down by a fifth in the first
10 weeks of this year com-
pared with 2019, according to
the Pacific Maritime Assn.,
an industry trade group, al-
though the trade war and
competition from East and
Gulf Coast ports are also fac-
tors.
Strong contracts with
the International Longshore
and Warehouse Union pre-
vent layoffs among the 8,
members staffing the twin
ports: They are paid for 40
hours a week regardless of
the drop in shifts. But the
slowdown has dramatically
affected a group of some
3,500 dockworkers known as
“casuals,” contingency
workers who have yet to be-
come regular longshore
workers. Their shifts have
dropped from more than
2,000 a week to about 200.
The crisis is most severe
for the 13,000 truckers who
ferry goods from ships to
warehouses and rail yards
across Southern California.
Some 80% are independent
contractors who own their
trucks and get paid per load.
As cargo has dwindled and
work has dried up, they are
panicking.
A Facebook page with
5,800 drivers, mostly Latino
immigrants, is filled with
photos of locked terminal
gates and posts offering big
rigs for sale because the
owners are unable to meet
mortgage payments.
“We are in a state of emer-
gency,” said Ron Herrera,
President of the Los Angeles
County Labor Federation.
“If there’s no cargo, no one

gets paid. For independent

contractors, it is especially

devastating. They are not el-

igible for unemployment,

unlike employee drivers.”

But even the 300 Teamsters

who serve the ports are not

immune. On Feb 25, Carson-

based Shippers Transport

Express texted its 145 union-

ized drivers, telling them

they would be laid off two

days later.

Nicolasa Huerta and her

partner, Benny Cruz, who

drove night shifts for Ship-

pers, are among those who

lost their jobs. “They had us

working two days a week,”

said Huerta, 47. “Then it was

one day. Then they told us to

stay home a week. Then we

got the text.”

Huerta was earning $

an hour. Unemployment

benefits won’t pay as much,

and she is afraid she will be

unable to afford the $2,000-

a-month mortgage on her

small Compton home, not to

mention a $315 monthly car

loan and $600 in monthly

credit card bills.

“Oh my goodness, I

worked so hard to get the

house,” she said. “I don’t

want to lose it because of this

virus.”

For her daughters, ages

16 and 9, Huerta tries to re-

main calm. “My kids need to

see me strong,” she said. “I

cannot just collapse. This is

happening to all of us. If

there’s no ships coming in,

there’s no work, so compa-

nies have no choice. We’re

holding on in hopes they will

call us back.”

Weston LaBar, chief exe-

cutive of the Harbor Truck-

ing Assn., a trade group for

about 100 large drayage com-

panies, estimates “business

is down 60% to 70% for the

last week of February and

into March. The coronavirus

has already cost our indus-

try millions upon millions of

dollars in lost productivity

and administrative costs.”

Terminal closures mean

truckers can’t return empty

containers and chassis, the

flat steel beds they sit on.

“Every terminal has an ap-

pointment system that

regulates what containers

you pick up and drop off,”

LaBar said. “If your appoint-

ments are at a closed termi-

nal, then you can’t operate.”

Trucking companies are

being charged daily fees for

late returns, leading to fights

with ocean carriers and cus-

tomers over who should pay.

“They’re facing six- and sev-

en-figure equipment bills,”

he added. “Everything is go-

ing downhill. The longer this

goes on, certain companies

may go out of business.”

The snafus exceed what

the ports experienced dur-

ing a 2014 slowdown amid

contentious union negotia-

tions or in 2018, when docks

were clogged with extra

cargo in anticipation of

Trump’s China tariffs,

LaBar said.

“I’ve never seen such dis-

ruption,” he added. “We’re in

an unprecedented situa-

tion.”

Big companies aren’t the

only victims of the spread of

the coronavirus. Thousands

of small businesses depend

on the twin ports, from

freight forwarders to ware-

house owners to trucking

brokers.

At his office in Santa Fe

Springs this week, Michael

Marchica, the owner of MFB

Transportation, a small lo-

gistics agency, stared dis-

consolately at a live feed

from the ports on his desk-

top monitor. It displayed five

open and five closed termi-

nals. Even the open ones

showed few trucks in line.

In the past, he said, the

feed would show “pictures

where you couldn’t even see

the streets because of so

many trucks.”

Before the coronavirus

hit, Marchica was dispatch-

ing up to 60 truckers a day to

pick up imports from China

— pressure cookers, shoes,

clothing, even paddle surf-

boards. Now, he said, “we’re

deader than a doornail. I

haven’t seen anything from

my customers in three

weeks. The factories in

China have shut down or the

sailings have been can-

celed.”

Two weeks ago, Marchica

laid off one of his three dis-

patchers and one of his two

billing clerks. He has cut the

hours of the others. His out-

of-work truckers, all inde-

pendent owner-operators,

“are hurting. They’re back

on their rent. I know a couple

of guys are doing Uber.”

Marchica’s company has

lost $200,000 since January.

He has dipped into personal

savings to support his family

of four, as he faces medical

bills for his wife’s breast can-

cer treatments.

“Its really, really, really

bad,” he said. “It’s wiping me

out, quick. But everyone’s in

the same boat.”

Exporters are also af-

fected by the closures and

snarled supply chain. Na-

tional companies that ship

meat, poultry and hay to

China through California

ports, along with California

farmers who export oranges

and other produce, report

that refrigerated containers

are in short supply and cold

storage facilities are over-

flowing with inventory.

“Our farmers have prod-

uct stuck on the docks,”

Seroka said. “We’re working

diligently with the liner com-

panies to put vessel services

in place so we can move the

exports and evacuate the

empty containers.”

But even as port officials

scramble to cope with the

current disruption, they are

also worrying about what

happens when the virus sub-

sides, Chinese factories

ramp up, and delayed cargo

floods through the ports.

“We’re going to witness a

really big pendulum swing,”

Seroka said. “It will mean a

strong wave of imports. We

need to have all hands on

deck to capture those and

push them through the port

with high velocity.”

Railroad executives,

trucking company owners,

terminal operators and ship

operators are meeting with

port officials to discuss what

might happen next. That in-

cludes, he said, “when we’re

going to schedule ships, how

sailings are going to come

into place. We’ve got a lot of

empty containers and more

importantly, a lot of exports

that have to move from these

docks.”

For the twin ports, which

serve more than 200,

businesses shipping some

$500 billion in cargo, the fear,

Cordero acknowledged, is “a

repetition of what we experi-

enced in the last quarter of

2018,” when importers front-

loaded orders to avoid tar-

iffs.

“There weren’t enough

dockworkers to unload all

the containers,” he recalled.

“There weren’t enough

trucks to get this stuff off the

docks. We have to prepare to

recuperate from the co-

ronavirus situation.”

Workers suffer as port traffic drops

[Ports, from A1]

THE PORTS of Los Angeles and Long Beach project a 15% to 17% plunge in cargo volumes in the first quarter of this year versus 2019.

Luis SincoLos Angeles Times

NICOLASA HUERTA was laid off from her job as a truck driver at the ports. She

is fearful of how she will pay her bills, including the mortgage on her house.

Brian van der BrugLos Angeles Times

to test hundreds and hun-
dreds and hundreds of peo-
ple every day” at the county-
run lab alone, said L.A.
County Public Health De-
partment Director Barbara
Ferrer. “Now it’s up to the in-
dividual provider to make
that determination.”
California has tested 516
people for COVID-19 to date,
far below what is probably
needed in a state where Gov.
Gavin Newsom declared a
state of emergency this week
due to the outbreak. Though
there are only about nine
known instances of commu-
nity spread of the virus in
California, the number of
people who have been ex-
posed to it appears to be
growing daily.
About 1,250 Californians
who were potentially ex-
posed to COVID-19 on a
cruise ship need to be tested
for the virus. There are more
than 9,000 people in the state
who have recently returned
from countries experiencing
severe outbreaks. Then
there are others who may
have been exposed within
the community and are now
worried about infecting
their families.
Renee Schwartz, a 60-

year-old North Hills resi-

dent, said she was told by

her doctors that her sinus in-

fection and breathing prob-

lems could probably be

COVID-19. But staff at multi-

ple Los Angeles-area hospi-

tals this week told her they

don’t test for the virus.

“I said ‘Who does testing?

And they said, ‘No idea,’ ”

Schwartz said.

Ferrer estimated that 50

people in the county had

been tested for the novel co-

ronavirus. The low numbers

have been due to limited

testing capacity at the lab,

not a shortage of test kits,

she said.

On Thursday night, Lab-

Corp, a commercial lab,

came online, Ferrer said,

and on Monday, Quest Diag-

nostics is expected to begin

offering testing as well. “This

is all good news,” she said.

“The limitation of our lab

was not the lab kits, but

we’re only one lab, and we

could only process a certain

number of tests in one day.”

On Friday morning, U.S.

Health and Human Services

Secretary Alex Azar told re-

porters that the agency had

provided all tests to the state

of California “that they’ve

asked for.”

A spokeswoman for the

California Health and Hu-

man Services Agency ap-

peared to agree with Azar,

saying in an email to The

Times that California “has

continually requested more

testing capacity from the

federal government, and the

CDC has continued to fulfill

those requests on an on-

going basis.”

“As this need expands, we

continue to ask for more

tests — including just to-

day,” she added.

The CDC has shipped

enough test supplies to eval-

uate up to 75,000 people in

public health laboratories

nationwide, according to

Azar, who said he expected

up to 4 million test kits to be

available next week. “Every-

thing is on schedule for the

testing,” he added.

Integrated DNA Tech-

nologies, a private company

working with HHS, also said

Friday that it had produced

enough supply to enable

testing for more than 700,

patients, but a spokeswom-

an said she did not have fur-

ther information regarding

when or where those sup-

plies were delivered.

In a letter sent to medical

staff at one Downey hospital

and viewed by The Times, an

infection control coordina-

tor instructed doctors to dis-

charge patients with mild

coronavirus symptoms, ask-

ing them to self-isolate at

home. In the long run, that

tactic will make the total

number of coronavirus cases

virtually unknowable — at

least until retrospective

testing is available.

“Myself and my col-

leagues have been working

in the trenches in the ER,

and we can’t get people

tested,” said another doctor

who works at a hospital in

Downey. Both declined to be

identified because they are

not authorized to speak to

the media.

The doctor said another

suspected coronavirus pa-

tient was a transplant nurse,

whose job is to work with

immune-deficient patients.

“I said, ‘Come on! Please! We

need to test her!’ ”

Amid the testing short-

falls, some healthcare work-

ers also cast doubt on fed-

eral officials’ stringent ap-

proach to testing. One Cali-

fornia nurse who was ex-

posed to a confirmed coro-

navirus patient has symp-

toms and is in quarantine,

but has not yet been tested

for the virus by the CDC.

“They said they would

not test me because if I were

wearing the recommended

protective equipment then I

wouldn’t have the corona-

virus. What kind of science-

based answer is that?” the

nurse, who asked to remain

anonymous, said in a state-

ment read by Deborah Bur-

ger, president of the Nation-

al Nurses United union, in a

news conference in Oakland

on Thursday.

“I’m a registered nurse

and I need to know if I’m pos-

itive before going back to

care for patients,” the nurse

added. “Delaying this test

puts the whole community

at risk.”

Nationwide, 1,526 pa-

tients had been tested at the

CDC as of Wednesday, in ad-

dition to the testing done at

local and state labs, said

agency spokesman Richard

Quartarone.

In a call with reporters on

Tuesday, Dr. Nancy Messon-

nier evaded a question

about whether the narrow

testing criteria early in the

outbreak were linked to the

limited availability of test

kits and potentially hin-

dered the nation’s response

to the outbreak. She also

would not name the cause of

flaws in the early test kits,

saying the investigation is

ongoing.

“What we really need to

focus on is where we are to-

day,” she said. “We need to be

focused on what we’re doing

today to identify patients

who are ill, make sure that

they’re getting appropri-

ately treated and tested, and

make sure that we’re pro-

tecting our communities.”

It is unclear whether

those steps are being taken

quickly enough as local

health departments strain

to keep up as the outbreak

swells.

In L.A. County, a 34-year-

old woman has been self-

quarantining for two days

after her doctor told her he

suspected her high fever and

pneumonia were caused by

the virus. She has been wait-

ing to hear from the public

health department for next

steps.

“I haven’t been con-

tacted, I haven’t been

tested,” she said. “I’m not

being treated and I’m still

exposing people by staying

here at home. I live with fam-

ily — they have jobs, they

have schools. I’m sick with

something, obviously.”

Shortage of test kits fuels chaos at hospitals

[Coronavirus,from A1]