Town governments, along with businesses and residents, are hunkering down and trying to reduce exposure risk to COVID 19, reducing office hours, canceling meetings and town programs.
As reports of more confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus COVID 19 rolled in over the weekend, towns have some tough calls to make about how – and whether – business would continue to be conducted over the next few weeks.
In Temple, Emergency Management Director John Kieley called for some preparedness measures at Town Meeting, including increasing the welfare budget, and changing the purpose of a line item in the budget from emergency management for wildfires to a more general “emergency management.”
These steps are precautionary, Kieley told the crowd, but a good step to take in to prevent scramble in a worst-case scenario.
On Monday, Kieley said he was glad to see there was town support for those measures, both of which passed with little discussion and unanimously. Kieley said he’s submitted a list of procedures to help limit exposure while allowing critical town functions to continue, which the Select Board will have to review.
His main concern, he said, was not at the town level, but whether or not the state and the federal government were prepared, particularly in the area of testing kits.
Many towns are taking their cues from federal guidelines, and public gatherings have been suspended until at least April 6 in many towns.
“If you have town business that you can conduct by home by telephone or internet, it is strongly encouraged. We need to limit exposure to town employees who provide critical services in the town infrastructure,” an open letter from Antrim town officials reads. “This is a dynamic event that changes by the hour. There is no need to panic, but we need to practice precautions and prevention to help prevent the spread of the virus.”
Several towns have canceled public meetings, and others, such as Wilton, have gone with an electronic approach, announcing that their regular Select Board meeting will be live-stream only, and the meeting of the economic development council is to be by teleconference.
Greenville town offices will be closed to the public and public meetings suspended until further notice, according to Town Administrator Tara Sousa. While town office personnel are still present at their jobs and handling business by phone and email, the general public will not be allowed in the building.
Jaffrey, which closed its offices Monday for a deep cleaning of the office after learning the spouse of an employee had contact with a person who had a presumptive diagnosis of COVID 19, expects to be back open for business for the remainder of the week. However, other town entities, such as the Jaffrey library, were attempting to limit contact with the public through a curbside pick-up program. (See our full story on libraries on page 18)
Even emergency services, such as the police department, requested a limit to face-to-face contact. The Bennington Police, as well as the New Ipswich Police, sent our messages requesting that residents conduct any business possible, such as filing non-emergency reports, by phone or email.
Dublin Fire Chief Thomas Vanderbilt said what is crucial right now is getting the information out to residents “because it’s changing a couple times a day.”
Dublin is using its town website to post information for residents.
“There’s just a lot of information and we want to cut down on misinformation,” Vanderbilt said.
With procedures in place, Vanderbilt said the town is always preparing for a situation that may come up.
“We’ve been planning for this disaster, we don’t know which particular one, but here it is so it starts with screening and that’s going to happen with the PSAP when you call 911, the public service answering point, and they’re going to go through a checklist. Have you been traveling? Have you been around a group with 100 exposed people? things like that,” Vanderbilt said.
And if they get a call for someone who is showing symptoms, the approach has changed.
“We’re going to limit how many people go in to see the patient,” Vanderbilt said. “Typically six of us might go waltzing in there, now we’re going to one person go in and they’re going to be in full gear.”
Because Vanderbilt knows what could happen if one of his department members test positive for COVID-19.
“If they get taken out of service it’s a cascade effect,” Vanderbilt said. “Next call you have one less person and pretty soon we’re not going to be there to help. It’s all about limiting our exposure.”
Vanderbilt said that the coronavirus has been in the department’s radar for a while, but things have ramped up recently. He said there have been three conference calls a week with state officials as of recently.
“If we can flatten that bell curve and slow this down it’s going to be huge,” Vanderbilt said. “We’re all hyper-aware right now. But it’s all best practices anyway. Nobody wants to catch the flu either.”
As of Saturday, Vanderbilt said his department had not responded to any suspected COVID-19 calls, but said they are staying vigilant in the case one does come through. And that means making sure protective gear is used only when necessary.
“If you go to look for protective gear it’s not out there,” he said. “Right now we’re in good shape, but a few calls and all of a sudden we’re running out of gowns, pretty soon masks, so we’re going to start seeing a lot of resources come in from the federal side.”
Vanderbilt said the CDC has a lot of important information out there and that residents can use the 211 number. The town’s emergency management services has also expanded to best serve the town. He said where Dublin really shines is how residents look out for each other and pass along information.
Dublin Police Chief Timothy Suokko said being more cautious is of the utmost importance.
“Right now it’s just keeping people away from people, promoting good hygiene and we’ve got systems in place if we’re responding to calls, 911 is going to screen those calls to make sure we’re not walking into a situation that someone may be infected,” Suokko said. “We never like to use these protocols but we do have emergency operations plans in place and it’s good to fall back on those for these kinds of emergencies.”
Suokko said he can’t remember a time where they specifically trained for this kind of event cause they’re obviously so rare.
“It’s not something we’re constantly working on, but we do have plans in place,” Suokko said of a pandemic emergency.
Suokko said the direction of how to best approach the coming weeks will be handed down from the federal level.
“We’re going to keep them in place until the CDC recommends otherwise,” Suokko said. “It’s kind of a top down approach for this. We’re not obviously scientists or doctors so we’re just going on the recommendations we’re getting and hoping at some point it will all level off and go back to business as usual.”
He said officers in the Dublin Police Department always have masks, sanitizer and gloves available, but “we’re obviously more vigorous in using them right now.”
Tim Goodwin contributed to this story.