The following was submitted by Mark Roye as an open letter to Mayor Clay Koplin, City Manager Helen Howarth, Cordova City Council and Cordova Prepared. Roye is a Cordova-based retired fisherman who also served as the supervising attorney for the Bethel Regional Office of Alaska Legal Services.
Mr. Mayor,
I and many others in Cordova received the news of the governor’s travel restrictions on interstate travel that includes mandatory quarantine with possible criminal penalties with a great deal of gratitude. I am certain that you, like many other community leaders throughout Alaska, played an important role in encouraging the governor’s decisive action. For that effort I commend you.
However, with community spread of the virus reported and confirmed cases in several Alaskan locations, it remains critical that we do all we can to eradicate this disease by breaking the chain of transmission. Building “firebreaks” if you will, in exactly the same manner as fighting wildfires. Should the virus take hold in Cordova, resulting in localized community spread, our medical infrastructure would be immediately overrun. Our small hospital has very limited personnel, no respiratory therapist and no ventilator. Evacuation by air ambulance will offer no solace, as every other small community throughout the state will be dependent on the very small fleet of such assets.
I’m sure that you have a good understanding of these harsh realities, and that you have been getting sound advice from state public health officials.
The only way to protect Cordovans, as well as to do our essential part in ending this epidemic in general and permitting us to return to business as usual, is to continue to build those “firebreaks.”
We must therefore build on the Governor’s general interstate restrictions by extending them to intrastate air travel. Cordova has few options to protect its citizens, help stamp out the disease overall and facilitate economic recovery. The very most effective tactic to achieve all of these objectives is to adapt the governor’s policy and apply it to local circumstances. We must extend those restrictions to intrastate arrivals to our airport, and we must do so immediately.
However, the Governor’s declaration, even without further application to intrastate travel, poses some very complex and difficult problems for Cordova.
The declaration permits several exemptions from the quarantine mandate, provided that employers follow a certain protocol and certify to the Department of Commerce and Economic Development that they have in place a plan to protect local citizens as well as their own workers. It is cited here:
“If your business is included in Attachment A, and your workers must travel to enter Alaska, you must submit a plan or protocol for maintaining critical infrastructure to the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development by 3:00 pm March 24, outlining how you will avoid the spread of COVID-19 and not endanger the lives of the communities in which you operate, of others who serve as a part of that infrastructure or the ability of that critical infrastructure to function.”
This is what lawyers call a “condition precedent.” That means that to avail oneself of the exemptions afforded by Attachment A, each business entity must meet that condition first and follow that protocol before operating in order to be eligible.
Fisheries are one of enumerated exempt “critical infrastructure” industries.
Fish processors and others might be able meet such protocols and certification on behalf of their employees. But in Area E fisheries, all of the fishing operations, be they single-handing gillnetters, seine boat operators with numerous crew or long liners, are separate business entities. They are individual producers, not employees of any company. They are therefore each separately and individually required to make such certification to the department.
Thus the “firebreaks” I suggest must consist of extending the mandatory quarantine with possible penalties to intrastate flights, clear enforcement of the policies articulated in the condition precedent to the exemption of Attachment A that applies to each and every separate independent business entity — read boat operator — and a clear notice to all of those affected that this is required. This policy is already contemplated and being disseminated by UFA. See bit.ly/3bqYuA0
The simpler alternative for those individual operators would be to undergo the mandatory quarantine before being granted open access to the harbor, the campground or merchants. This would be extremely difficult to administer.
None of these operators is likely to fully understand these restrictions. None will be able to properly protect the community. Hundreds will soon be flocking to Cordova with no plan in place to assure that widespread community spread does not devastate Cordova. This would be disastrous.
I know that many think that the epidemic is under sufficient control that we can get back to the business of business. They are gravely mistaken.
To prevent this impending catastrophe we must build those “firebreaks” now, not descend into madness. No epidemiologist believes that we are ready to return to normal functioning. To restore our economy we must first eradicate the virus. To permit hundreds of individual operators to stream into town unrestrained by first observing any quarantine will exacerbate the epidemic, not help eradicate it, thereby forestalling economic recovery indefinitely.
There is no alternative. We must manage the unavoidable, avoid the unmanageable. Having hundreds flock to town in the midst of a Pandemic is clearly unmanageable.
Sincerely,
Mark Roye
Cordova
