At a virtual town hall meeting Tuesday night, Emergency Operations Center members and medical and emergency services staff fielded questions from Haines residents related to COVID-19 and social-distancing measures in the community. Many questions focused on the potential for people entering the community to circumvent quarantine requirements, especially construction crews, who will be exempt.

Haines Borough manager and EOC incident commander Debra Schnabel said there are no COVID-19 cases currently identified in Haines, which suggests the disease will be brought to Haines when someone enters the community. 

“Why haven’t we closed our town to incoming people?” Schnabel asked. In answer, she said the state has issued a mandate limiting travel between communities to critical need or efforts to support critical infrastructure. People traveling to support critical infrastructure are not required to quarantine for 14 days. The mandate prohibits communities like Haines that are on the road system from adopting more restrictive measures. 

In general, if people have questions about why the borough hasn’t imposed stricter rules, the answer is that they are following state policy, Schnabel said.

The borough is asking workers entering the community who support critical infrastructure to voluntarily comply with social-distancing measures, Schnabel said. She used construction workers entering town for the upcoming highway and harbor project as an example. Although the workers are exempt from the two-week quarantine required, she said the borough will ask workers to complete voluntary registration forms and ask employers to submit a plan of how they intend to protect the health of the community.

Would borough leaders be willing to ask the state to determine which construction projects are essential infrastructure and limit projects to those deemed essential? Haines resident Tom Morphet asked. He used the Small Boat Harbor expansion as an example. “We’ve been waiting on that for 40 years.” He said the local community should be able to determine which projects are essential.

Schnabel said although the question was valid, changing the construction schedule for Haines would require renegotiating legal contracts.

Scott Ramsey, another resident who called into the meeting, asked if it would be possible to ensure construction jobs went to local hires to both mitigate health concerns and bring jobs to the community. 

The borough has made this request, said Carolann Wooton, deputy commander for the Emergency Operations Center.

Resident Ron Jackson said he had seen a form around town requesting information from travelers and asked what the borough was planning to do with the information.

The EOC has posted voluntary registration forms at ports of entry where people entering the community are asked to provide contact information, Schnabel said. EOC members will use this contact information to check in with these individuals to make sure they understand and are engaging in the quarantine process.

Schnabel asked that community members inform the borough if they know of people not in compliance with 14-day quarantine requirements. She said the borough will send the police out to educate those in violation.

Other questions at the meeting dealt with topics ranging from the number of ventilators in Haines to the best way to determine whether someone is an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19. (The answers are two and there is no good way to determine who is an asymptomatic carrier. Tests are wrong about one-third of the time because they lack the sensitivity to detect the small amount of virus these individuals shed.)

People with lingering questions can send them to [email protected], said Mayor Jan Hill. She concluded the meeting with a reminder that residents should avoid flushing disinfectant wipes down the toilet at all costs in order to protect the borough’s sewer system.