HAZLETON - The line of vehicles - some clean and new, others limping and looking thirsty for a sip of oil - snaked through the parking lot of the Most Precious Blood Catholic Church here on a drizzly September Wednesday, spilled out onto Seybert Street and finally ended with more vehicles stacking up on Fifth Street.
The traffic jam, though, was inconsequential. Everyone was headed to the same place - a weekly food distribution run by the nearby Hazleton Integration Project.
As drivers idled to the front of the line, organizers were chatting up the drivers, inviting them to pick up free backpacks at an upcoming event, the only price being a completed U.S. Census form. And then they got down to business.
“Cuantas familias?” Hazleton Integration Project staff member Clara Garcia asked from behind her masked face; or, in English, “How many households are you picking up food for?”
Then a corps of fresh-faced teens would take the required number of cardboard boxes filled with a bunch of kitchen staples to the waiting cars.
It seemed a bit like war-time rationing. Only the enemy this time aren’t Communists, or Nazis or terrorists. It’s the coronavirus.
But you have to hand it to Hazleton.
Just when it looked like the battle here might cause the little city in northeastern Pennsylvania to come apart at the seams, people pitched in together, bridged all kinds of divides, and came through one of Pennsylvania’s worst coronavirus storms before having to turn hotels into quarantine centers, or sending COVID-19 patients out of town because the local hospital was out of capacity.
True, it took a lot of direct personal suffering to focus the population’s attention.
But many here now are taking as a point of pride Hazleton’s journey from being one of America’s small-town COVID-19 hot spots - drawing attention from American cultural amplifiers like “60 Minutes” and The New York Times - to now, in September, boasting new case incidence rates below Pennsylvania’s statewide average.
Averting tensions
City residents say they learned their lessons the hard way, responded, and narrowly averted a new Civil War along the way.
The war almost started because Hazleton’s Latino residents were especially susceptible to the first wave of coronavirus. And that stoked some of the old cultural tensions between the city’s original European immigrants and the new Latino majority (57 percent by the 2010 Census, probably more now) of native Dominican, Mexican and Puerto Rican families who have made this place their home over the last 30 years.
In actuality, there were reasons for the COVID-19 surge that went way beyond skin color or accents.
- The biggest employers in the area are the monster warehouses and meat-processing plants that fill up the industrial parks along the nearby Interstate 81 corridor. Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, these kinds of businesses remained open, and were seen as hot spots for person-to-person spread.
- The jobs have attracted a second wave of Latinos to the Hazleton area, many of whom are recent transplants from New York City — the original epicenter for coronavirus in America — and stay with friends or family here. Many of these workers are forced to carpool to work each day. Still others live in Hazleton because housing is affordable here, but keep jobs in New York because the pay is better there.
- Some of the workers are hired through temporary staffing agencies. They don’t share the same benefits or sense of job security as full-time staffers, so they are reluctant to call off sick.
- Much of the housing in Hazleton is multi-family, meaning buildings with a lot of common doors, porches and hallways that present more social distancing challenges than for families in a typical detached dwelling. And some of that housing got extra-packed this March, as New Yorkers scared by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s warnings of an impending medical disaster fled to stay with relatives and friends here.
But as Hazleton veered frighteningly close to overwhelming the capacity of its single hospital, the Old Guard had all the ammo it needed to point fingers.
In early April, one Lehigh Valley Health Network employee posted this online: “It is this simple. The Latino Community- does not care and they act and they have acted very irresponsibly... They do not care and they do not follow the rules and advice of our government. And it has been that way since they flocked to Hazleton.”
The employee was quickly fired, but her comments still anger Annie Mendez, a Hispanic businesswoman and community activist here.
Mendez said such remarks are part of the legacy of Lou Barletta, the former Hazleton mayor and U.S. Congressman who made his political name by pushing a number of city ordinances designed to make Hazleton “one of the toughest places in the United States” for illegal immigration in 2006.
“Every opportunity that these racists from the Lou Barletta era get to point fingers or to attack the community, they come out,” Mendez said. “The blatant racism of this Anglo community is still very much alive.”
All the people were really guilty of, she and others say, was a language barrier, fear and concern about the other-worldly cost of health care.
Rosanna Gabriel, executive director Hazleton Integration Project, at a weekly food distribution run by the Hazleton Integration Project on Sept. 2, 2020. Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com
Some Latinos, said Rosanna Gabriel, acting executive director of the non-profit Hazleton Integration Project, probably were slow to seek out medical attention for COVID-19 in the early going because of a fear that getting into “the system” could expose them to hassles over their immigration status.
“A lot of people never went for the test because they were afraid. Afraid to find somebody who doesn’t speak the language, or afraid about: ‘Oh, they’re going to notice I don’t have a green card, and probably I’m going to have problems,’” Gabriel said.
But belying the stigmas that the Latinos couldn’t or wouldn’t help themselves - with the help of their employers and groups like HIP that delivered Spanish-language public service messaging - they sometimes led the way in flattening the curve.
Jose Concepcion, who runs one of the shuttle bus services that keeps the human current between Hazleton and New York City thrumming, closed his company down on March 18. He didn’t really have a choice, he remembers now, as many of his drivers, he said, were already threatening to quit out of fear that their 15-passenger vans were becoming petri dishes for the disease.
Jose Concepcion runs one of the shuttle bus services in Hazleton, RC Express. Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com
“‘You want to fire me? Fire me. I’m not going to continue driving,’” Concepcion said one of his drivers told him last March 17 after transporting a group of passengers that were most notable for their coughs. “That is the time I say, ’Over.’”
Concepcion didn’t reopen until June 4, and is still only filling his RC Express vans to limited capacity.
Local Spanish-language media stepped up, too, hosting elected officials and doctors from the hospital on Facebook Live streams and radio broadcasts to help answer questions about the virus and dispel myths that some of the residents held about what might happen if they were uninsured, or found to be undocumented.
“The demographics in Hazleton, if you’re not paying a lot of attention to the Spanish-speaking population, you’re not doing your job. You’re missing a significant component of the population,” said Dr. Michael Evans, chief of the Lehigh Valley Physicians Group - Hazleton. “So that was part of our effort from the start.
“First of all just to make them understand what as going on with the coronavirus. And secondly, to make sure that people understood that the hospital was a safe place,” said Evans.
And while Hazleton still is not a paragon of peace, love and understanding, there is ample evidence that residents were able to work together to stop the spread.
“It’s sad to say, but I feel like people, when a family member died, or a friend, like, that’s when they actually started to (take it seriously). Because there’s a lot of people who still don’t believe that the pandemic is like, real."
Kysvell Gonzalez, 17
Mayor Jeff Cusat imposed an 8 p.m. curfew, enforced by the local police, and residents paid attention to it.
Barletta, the one-time illegal immigration warrior, coaxed his old friend and Hazleton’s native son, Los Angeles Angels Manager Joe Maddon, to work his baseball contacts to help produce Spanish-language public service announcements that aired on local television stations and in other media.
All played out, of course, against the hard reality of loved ones and friends suffering.
“It’s sad to say, but I feel like people, when a family member died, or a friend, like, that’s when they actually started to (take it seriously),” said Kysvell Gonzalez, 17, and one of the young volunteers at Wednesday’s food drive. “Because there’s a lot of people who still don’t believe that the pandemic is like, real. So I feel like that (personal experience) urged them to like wear their masks and to stay protected of, not just themselves but of everyone around them.”
Employers make changes
Several of the region’s major employers stepped up, too.
Hazleton’s first wave of coronavirus was largely tracked to the close-in quarters at which many of those same residents work in the region’s food processing and distribution centers, all of which stayed open and, in some cases, only ratcheted up as life-sustaining businesses in the pandemic’s early going.
Cargill Meat Solutions, a plant in the nearby Humboldt Industrial Park that produces “case-ready” beef and pork products for all kinds of East Coast supermarkets, is Exhibit A. The plant was caught flat-footed at the start of the outbreak, with well over 100 cases of coronavirus reported among its workers within the first few weeks.
“We didn’t think it was going to move so fast,” the plant’s general manager, Aaron Humes, told The Times in an interview in late April. “We scratch our heads and ask, ‘Why didn’t we know this a month ago?’”
Margaret Haley, a phlebotomist supervisor at Health & Wellness Center at Hazleton prepares to administer a blood test on Sept. 2, 2020. Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com
Cargill wasn’t alone. The local Amazon warehouse is believed to have had the worst COVID-19 outbreak in that company’s far-flung network, with more than 100 infections.
The outbreak spawned a quick reaction from a group of worried local elected officials, who stepped up to make their code enforcement officers available to apply Centers for Disease Control guidelines and applicable state directives to the sites, and to check on worker complaints about requirements that weren’t being followed.
Bilingual yard signs popped along the entrances to the Humboldt Industrial Park, exhorting workers to stay clean - and stay away if they were feeling ill. Workers were exhorted to stop sharing food at their lunch breaks and to carpool to the plants in groups of four or less.
“The funny thing about the plants is, we kind of knew that the state and federal governments weren’t going to have enough inspectors to check the plants out... and we didn’t have any authority to enforce anything,” recalled Jim Montone, chairman of the Hazle Township board of supervisors, which plays host to many of the area’s biggest plants.
“But they were very receptive. There’s no one up there wanting to get people sick.”
Cargill, for example, ultimately opted to shut down, taking a week to install plastic sheeting between work stations, rearrange schedules and supply face shields to workers in areas of the plant where physical distancing isn’t possible.
The plant, in total, had 202 of its 746 workers infected with the virus. Two died. But as of the end of August, union local records showed zero active cases from the plant.
“After the plant reopened, we had no incidences (of COVID-19) until July 18th,” said Wendell Young, president of Local 1776 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Young thinks that worker’s case might have been tied to a Fourth of July gathering. But in any event, “the bottom line is even with that case, that’s only one new case since April.
“The way I see that is, tremendous success, that we went from having over two hundred people in that company sick in March and April to after April, only one case since then.”
Ironically, most of the businesses reached for this story were unwilling to discuss their changes.
Pedestrians cross Broad Street in Hazleton on Sept. 2, 2020. Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com
But Young and the local elected officials who pressured them to make changes after the initial explosion, are speaking for them. “It’s real simple. Everybody’s wearing a mask. They staggered shifts. They separated people. They put up barriers. They’re cleaning the plant the way they’re supposed to be cleaning.
“The proof is... if you do these things, few or no people get sick.”
Big Health also showed its ability to meet real needs.
Lehigh Valley Health Network, which owns the city’s sole hospital and is the dominant health care provider here, opened easily-accessible COVID testing centers, participated in daily conference calls with business, government and non-profit leaders, and ramped up its bilingual messaging.
Evans said the Spanish language Facebook Live sessions were as informative for the local business community as anyone.
“We were learning about the binds that people were in,” the doctor said. “I mean, they were hearing: ‘Stay at home.‘ And that was the message coming from us and statewide leadership. But then they were fearful that they were going to lose their jobs or somehow be in trouble at work if they didn’t go to work.
“I think it was helpful for us to take that back to the Chamber of Commerce and the business leaders and let them know that these are the concerns and, you know, how can we address all these things together. And I think it did help us work that out.”
Hazleton Mayor Jeff Cusat at City Hall on Sept. 2, 2020. Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com
Where things stand
Hazleton, like most of the rest of Pennsylvania and America as a whole, saw a bump in the number of COVID-19 cases at mid-summer, but health officials say the nature of the second wave was very different from the first.
Evans said the average age of positive patients was 48 in the spring. During the summer surge, the average has been coming in at 35.
And with a paucity of new cases coming from the plants, Evans said, it appears that more of the new cases are coming from a mix of summer vacation travel - both to New York and out of the country - and just general fatigue with the always-on-guard status of the last few months.
“I think it’s just what everybody’s feeling. People are sick of being cooped up. The weather is nice. People want to get out and enjoy themselves,” Evans said. “And so especially when the message is not so much in your face anymore I think people are letting down their guard and maybe not always social distancing and maybe not always avoiding crowds like we were previously.”
He’s heard anecdotal evidence, Evans said, about some larger parties, and has seen waves of people showing up at the local testing center both for pre-travel testing clearances, or work clearances for when they return.
“A lot of people have loved ones back in the Dominican Republic and they haven’t seen them for so long because of the pandemic and when the flights are still going and there’s no strong message not to go there, they’re assuming it’s safe and going and seeing their loved ones.”
The Dominican Republic, itself, had a short-lived spike in cases this summer.
“The new message is really to try to target that younger group and have them understand what could go wrong if it all went the wrong way... having this spread throughout a household and have older people get sick,” Evans said.
Dr. Michael Evans, chief of the Lehigh Valley Physicians Group - Hazleton on Sept. 2, 2020. Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com
The next big worry for many, the start of the school year, has offered a little bit of breathing room right now: in late August, Hazleton city school leaders said they would be teaching all online for the first nine weeks of the school year.
In a sense, that just leaves room for other worries to push to the top, like making sure that those who have lost jobs or hours because of the recession are getting the help they need.
The region’s unemployment rate surged from 6.2 percent in February to a high of 17.9 percent in April. It still stood at 15.3 percent for June, the most recent month for which regional figures are available. In Hazleton itself, the pandemic peak unemployment topped out at 23.9 percent in May, and preliminary figures for July still had it at 23.2 percent.
Teri Ooms, executive director of The Institute, a regional economic research consortium supported by more than a dozen colleges and universities in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties, said the Hazleton numbers have likely been fueled by the loss of manufacturing jobs, and, the fear that some - especially those with underlying health conditions to think about - have about going back to work pre-vaccine.
At HIP, Gabriel said weekly food distributions have grown from serving 150 households at the start of the pandemic, to 300, to now, 500 each Wednesday.
“Children are in the house, and children without classes, without going to the school, they are eating all the time and parents need more food,” Gabriel said, as she supervised the distribution of pre-packed boxes stocked with non-perishables like rice, a variety of canned vegetables, fruits and soups, orange juice, pickles, crackers and more.
“A lot of parents are in unemployment and before they had the incentive. But now that’s gone,” Gabriel said, referring the $600 weekly pandemic supplement that the federal government had been paying out, but lapsed at the end of July. The Wolf Administration has opted into a smaller supplement program approved by President Donald Trump last month, but it’s still not clear when those $300-per-week benefits will start.
“And people are afraid,” Gabriel added. “They think the economy is going to be worse and they are afraid about not having food. If we had more (boxes), we could give more.”
But let’s face it. Talking recovery for the living is better than facing crisis with the dying.
“You’re always going to have your few haters,” said Cusat, the mayor. “But as a whole, when I asked the community to do what I thought needed to be done to handle it, everybody came together and did their part.”
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