A24 eZ re THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, MARCH 21 , 2020
the coronavirus outbreak
the thinning of their ranks caused
by the very virus they’re combat-
ing on the front lines.
It was late January when a unit
was dispatched to help a man who
had fallen ill. Five days later, fire-
fighters learned they had been as-
sisting o ne of A merica’s f irst covid-
19 patients.
Now a dozen San Jose firefight-
ers have tested positive for the vi-
rus. In all, 76 are off work because
of confirmed or suspected expo-sure — o ut of a department of 665.
To h alt the s pread, “we have had
to change everything we do,” said
Sean Kaldor, president of the fire-
fighters union. “How we live a t the
station, how we clean at the sta-
tion, how we respond to calls.”
The last is the most dramatic:
With every call — whether it’s a
house fire, a car accident or a medi-
cal emergency — firefighters now
assume that the people they are
assisting are positive for the coro-navirus. When they enter a build-
ing, they go one at a time and they
are required to don full protective
gear: a gown, mask, gloves and
goggles.
“It looks like Wuhan,” s aid Kaldor,
referring to the Chinese provincial
capital where the coronavirus first
emerged. “There’s new stress now
on every call — the level of precau-
tion and realizing what’s at risk ev-
ery time we walk out the door.”
The Seattle region already hashad a taste of what happens when
firefighters are infected but they
don’t k now it: A firefighter in Kirk-
land, Wash., the Seattle suburb
where an outbreak at a nursing
home caused the first U.S. corona-
virus death on Feb. 29, had the
disease and went to work unde-
tected for weeks thinking he had
pneumonia.
Since then, Seattle’s first re-
sponders have been taking extra
precautions. The city’s fire depart-ment saw a nearly 500 percent
jump in incidents for which per-
sonal protective equipment was re-
quired in just one week this month.
“If you e nd up with a significant
number of firefighters out of ser-
vice, not o nly c an they n ot respond
to covid-19 calls, but t hey also can’t
respond if a house catches on fire
or someone has a heart attack,”
said Durkan, S eattle’s m ayor.
In Texas, county leaders have
activated their emergency man-
agement and public health teams
to run inventories of personal pro-
tective equipment for health-care
workers.
For weeks, they have been corre-
sponding through group text mes-
sages, sharing advice about how
and when to cancel jury trials,
swapping guidance on how to
pause evictions and debating
whether to issue mandatory re-
strictions on gatherings. They have
put together a shareable document
comparing what each jurisdiction
has d one t o try to stop the spread.
Dallas is making recreational
vehicles available for exposed
emergency personnel who can’t g o
home. The city also is bracing for
cuts to services: low-priority 911
calls, like noise complaints or dis-
turbances, will have to b e ignored,
said Director of Emergency Man-
agement R ocky Vaz.
All the pressure, planning and
problems can a t times b oil over.
In Travis County, home to Aus-
tin, County Judge Eckhardt said
Wednesday that she “blew a gas-
ket” w hen s he s aw h ow many criti-
cal city and county employees
were packed into the same room
in the emergency operations cen-
ter. “I told them to virtualize the
room now,” s he s aid.
Nationwide, officials uniformly
say the health of citizens is their
foremost c oncern. B ut m oney i sn’t
far b ehind.
In New Orleans, the city’s bud-
get was strained after d ealing with
the October collapse of the Hard
Rock hotel and a December cyber-
attack on the city’s computer sys-
tems. But a coronavirus-fueled
knockout to the tourism industry
has Mayor LaTo ya Cantrell con-
sidering layoffs and furloughs of
city workers.
The pandemic also has threat-
ened the criminal justice system.
Public defense is largely funded
through court fees and fines, traffic
tickets and seat-belt violations.
That m oney h as all but d isappeared
as the city has temporarily stopped
pursuing such cases. If nothing is
done to replace the missing reve-
nue, New Orleans Chief Public De-
fender Derwyn Bunton said he will
be forced t o make “hard choices” a s
early as May.
“We were in financial crisis in
the best of days,” said Bunton, who
has begun reaching out to state and
federal officials seeking additional
funding. “You zero us out and what
looks like a crippled criminal legal
system will soon not look like a
criminal legal system at a ll.”
With the courts shut down
since Monday, bond hearings for
the newly arrested are being held
via videoconferencing. Public de-
fender Meghan Garvey watched
the proceedings from her home
Wednesday and w as horrified.
“There are multiple deputies in
this room in the jail where they
take everybody,” s he said. “Nobody
has masks or gloves on, and these
people who have just been booked
are coming i n from t he street. One
of the deputies is leaning right up
against an inmate, elbow-to-el-
bow, touching him as we speak.
What the hell?”
N ew Orleans has not done what
other c ities across t he United S tates
— including Baltimore, Cleveland,
Los Angeles, New York and Phila-
delphia — already have: stopped
arresting and j ailing people for low-
level, nonviolent offenses.
Cities might ultimately have to
do far more than that to cut back.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said
her western Ohio city of 140,000
has modeled what it would look
like to have 30 percent fewer fire-
fighters and police officers on duty.
O ther public services could f ace
budget cuts as tax revenue plum-
mets: The city is run primarily on
an earnings tax, and Whaley said
the impact of mass layoffs will be
evident within weeks. Services
like garbage collection — critical
to public health amid a pandemic
— c ould be v ulnerable.
“How do you pay for that when
there’s no money coming in?
That’s t he i ssue,” s aid Whaley, w ho
is second vice president of the
Conference o f Mayors.
Dayton has grown accustomed
to disasters, h aving e ndured a tor-
nado and a mass shooting last
year. But this is one, Whaley said,
that the city won’t be able to con-
front on its own. Federal assis-
tance w ill be vital.
“We’re going to do everything
we can to keep this going,” she
said, “but we’re going to need
some help.”
[email protected]
arelis.herná[email protected]Hernandez reported from San
Antonio, Scruggs from Seattle and
Webster from new orleans.BY GRIFF WITTE,
ARELIS R. HERNÁNDEZ,
GREGORY SCRUGGS
AND RICHARD A. WEBSTERIn San Jose, coronavirus infec-
tions have r ipped through fire s ta-
tions, sidelining more than one-
tenth of the department. In New
Orleans, the court system has
ground to a halt, prompting offi-
cials to consider whether they can
keep p aying public defenders. And
in Dayton, the m ayor has begun to
fear a decline in tax revenue so
severe there won’t be enough
money t o pick u p the trash.
The coronavirus outbreak is
forcing every state, city and coun-
ty to execute a plan of attack for
confronting the global pandemic.
It’s a process that Sarah Eckhardt,
the top official in Texas’s Travis
County, likened to “building the
plane while i n the air.”
But t he virus — a nd the extraor-
dinarily costly response to it — is
also putting enormous pressure
on all the normal stuff: the crimi-
nal justice, sanitation, transit,
emergency response and other
systems that r esidents expect f rom
their state and local governments.
Although the nation is just in
the first stages of what is likely to
be a prolonged struggle to sup-
press covid-19, the s train o n public
services is already beginning to
show. First responders are
stretched thin. Courts are para-
lyzed. And everywhere, money for
basic public services is running
out, fast.
“We have to m anage b eyond the
scope of anything one city has pre-
pared f or or can handle,” s aid Seat-
tle Mayor Jenny Durkan, whose
city is among the worst-hit in
America. “We’re spending all our
reserves right now, but we won’t
make it if the federal government
doesn’t s tep u p and step up big.”
Durkan said cities ultimately
will need “something bigger than
the New D eal just to stay a float.”
The U.S. Conference of Mayors
on Wednesday asked Congress for
considerably less than that, but
still a hefty sum: $250 billion in
emergency assistance just to “con-
tinue to provide vital public servic-
es.” Without it, the group warned
of cuts that would “exacerbate the
economic i mpact of this crisis.”
But as companies ranging from
the nation’s major airlines to
countless small b usinesses l ine u p
for assistance, it is unclear wheth-
er cities will actually get the mon-
ey. P resident Trump signaled
Thursday that there are limits to
how much the f ederal government
will help. In a conference call with
governors who want access to po-
tentially lifesaving medical equip-
ment, Trump insisted the U.S. gov-
ernment was “not a shipping
clerk” and that the states should
act on their own.
Even if Congress does appropri-
ate money, the amount might not
be sufficient for state and local
governments that already were
cash-strapped before this disaster
struck.
“We have never come back from
the reduction in public services
after the Great Recession,” said
Lee Saunders, president of the
American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employ-
ees, who is advocating for an even
bigger package of federal assis-
tance. “Now we’re paying for that.
It’s s howing.”
So far, authorities have been able
to minimize the symptoms of just
how badly they are being s queezed.
But they have had to get creative.
San Francisco libraries have
been transformed into child-care
centers for low-income families
whose children are suddenly out
of school.
Te xas’s Dallas County has asked
local vodka distilleries to shift to
manufacturing hand sanitizer for
the county’s first responders. It
has called on construction work-
ers t o donate their stockpile of f ace
masks t o medical f acilities.
Jurisdictions around the coun-
try are freeing up space in their
jails — and reducing the risk of an
unstoppable outbreak among the
confined — b y sending n onviolent
offenders home early.
In San Jose — an epicenter of
the U.S. outbreak, and living un-
der remain-in-place orders since
Monday — firefighters are work-
ing overtime. They have to, given
In many
locales,
crises
converge
Cities and states,
already cash-strapped,
struggle with pandemicPHotoS by MAx WHIttAKer f or tHe WASHIngton PoSt
San Jose Fire Department Communications Director Sean Lovens shows the full protective gear all firefighters must wear on every
emergency call, from house fires to car accidents, under the assumption someone they’re assisting is carrying the coronavirus.A Bay Area Rapid Transit train sits empty during rush hour Thursday in Richmond, Calif. As revenue dries up amid high demand
for services during the crisis, one mayor said cities ultimately will need “something bigger than the New Deal just to stay afloat.”