The Pandemic Takes A Toll on Balboa Park

More details on what a coronavirus vaccine rollout could look like here in San Diego County… Health officials yesterday provided more information about the plan. County Supervisor Greg Cox says it will be a phased-in approach and most San Diegans won’t get the vaccine until sometime next year. We’ll be following the cdc guidelines and making the first doses of the vaccines available for Healthcare workers or the frontline workers and people staying in long term healthcare facilities (:14) State officials will use Rady Children's hospital to store the vaccine. It’s not there now, but pending approvals, could start arriving as early as next week. Ultimately the CDC will determine who gets the vaccine first. COVID cases continue to soar here and across California… Yesterday, San Diego County health officials reported over 12 hundred new COVID-19 infections and 16 additional deaths. County leaders urge caution heading into the December holidays….traveling and gathering is once again not recommended. *** A bit of good news for ya… An ugly parking lot is now a nice-looking public plaza. After months of construction, city leaders yesterday unveiled the new Palisades Plaza in Balboa Park. The project transformed the dilapidated parking lot in front of the San Diego Air And Space Museum, the Automotive Museum, the city gym and the Comic-Con museum into a public gathering place. And actually...if you look at the original plans for the park when it first opened in 1935...the parking lot was always envisioned as a plaza. *** Damaging Santa Ana wind conditions are here, folks, and they’re expected to remain in our region through the end of the week. Maybe you can hear it in my voice...I am sneezing...and, actually, I always sneeze when the Santa Anas start blowing… And if you aren’t already worrying about a possible fire...you maybe should be… National Weather Service forecasters say a red flag warning linked to elevated fire danger is in place through the weekend. *** It’s Thursday, December 3. From KPBS, I’m Kinsee Morlan, in this week for Anica Colbert, and you’re listening to San Diego News Matters, a daily podcast powered by everyone in our newsroom. Stay with me for more of the local news you need. OK, so...this isn’t at all surprising...most of us parents who are currently helping educate our kids through distance learning at home expected this...but it’s now official… SAN DIEGO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT ANNOUNCED late TUESDAY night THAT IT WILL DELAY REOPENING PLANS because of spiking COVID-19 INFECTION RATES. KPBS EDUCATION REPORTER JOE HONG EXPLAINS WHAT EARLY 20-21 WILL LOOK LIKE FOR THE REGION'S LARGEST SCHOOL DISTRICT. The district was originally planning to open elementary schools on January 4th and middle and high schools on January 25th for hybrid instruction. But the current surge in cases has halted that timeline. The vast majority of instruction will stay online until further notice. Richard Barrera is the vice president of the district’s board of trustees. BARRERA.mp4 00:00:19:05 RICHARD BARRERA // SAN DIEGO UNIFIED SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER It’s a disappointment obviously because we and everybody had hoped that after the winter break we could start expanding into our phase two and subsequent phases, bringing more students back onto campus. District officials will provide another update on January 13th. In the meantime, the schools will continue offering limited in-person instruction to struggling students in all grades. So far, about 2,000 of the district’s more than 100,000 students have received some form of in-person instruction. *** As COVID numbers continue to rise across the county, a community health center in City Heights is trying to help those infected better navigate the deadly virus. KPBS reporter Max Rivlin-Nadler tells us resources are beginning to stretch thin. The rise in COVID cases at La Maestra’s clinic on Fairmount Avenue has been dramatic… Last week, positive covid cases were at 22%. The week before, it was 11%. The cases have doubled and are continuing to trend way up. Now, some supplies, like n95 masks, are beginning to run out. Corinne Hanson is the organization’s development director. If there is more and more patients, and we need to bring on more and more staff, then we could be pushed to the brink of our supplies. We always need more supplies for sure. The health center is offering rapid tests, which can give people experiencing symptoms results in just a few hours. *** And now from COVID to some holiday cheer… The US Forest Service is encouraging Californians to cut down their Christmas trees in national forests this year...with a permit, of course. CapRadio’s Scott Rodd reports on how the old-timey tradition can actually help mitigate wildfire dangers. [ambi hiking] Hiking below booming pine trees in Eldorado National Forest, I’m on the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. Six-to-eight feet, with bushy branches...the type that could showcase dozens of ornaments and strings of lights… Coincidentally...those are the kinds of trees the Forest Service would like get rid of. HERRON-1: “Fewer trees mean less vegetation that can feed unwanted wildfires.” Lisa Herron [“hair-en”] is with the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. HERRON-2: “Our local forest health experts will go out and they’ll identify the areas that will best benefit from thinning these trees, and they tend to be the perfect size for a Christmas tree.” [ambi sawing tree] The Forest Service issues thousands of Christmas tree permits every year in at least half-a-dozen of the state’s national forests. That may seem like a lot...but wildfire experts say it’s a tiny dent in the overall number of trees that need to be removed in California. Fires burned over 1 million acres in the state’s national forests in 2020. [ambi tree falling] The Forest Service is offering permits online this year...and they’re going quickly. Permits are still available in the Plumas, Tahoe and Humboldt-Toiyabe [“toy-YAH-bee”] National Forests. *** And some more holiday cheer for you…. Volunteers recently made a little bit of magic happen for families in need in Vista. KPBS North County reporter Tania Thorne shows us how homes were transformed into a winter wonderland. A big surprise for the Kidd family as they returned to their unit at the Solutions For Change campus. “When you guys leave just to be embraced with all the things in my house and know that you guys took your time….. Its special.” This was part of the organization’s annual “Breaking and Entering” event. Volunteers “break” into the units of formerly homeless families, to bring them holiday cheer. Before their return, volunteers were busy executing their “Breaking and Entering” annual event. “This is the 12th year that Solutions For Change has been able to put this event on and I think we need it this year more than ever to bring joy and through this whole season. It's been a rough year for a lot of people so it's truly a blessing. “ Over 150 parents and children were sent away for the day on Tuesday. While they were gone, the volunteers brought in personalized gifts, a decorated Christmas tree, notes of encouragement, and groceries to stock their refrigerators. “Our volunteers took a lot of effort in really making this happen and for our families that otherwise probably wouldn't even have a christmas and for some of our families it really is like their first christmas.” Solutions For Change located in Vista is a program for families experiencing homelessness that equips parents with new skills and resources to transform their lives. “A 700 day program, they actually graduate, they may have up to $3000 in their savings account and they're all 100% reunited back with their families.” Program leaders say there has been an outpouring of donations - and there was even a waitlist for volunteers wanting to participate in this year's breaking and entering event. *** Coming up… The pandemic has been brutal on things that depend on in-person visitors to stay afloat. How the museums and cultural institutions in Balboa Park have been weathering the pandemic storm. That story after a quick break. MIDROLL 2 Balboa Park is sooooo much more than just a beautiful park… it’s also home to a lot of San Diego’s museums and cultural centers. Of course, those all closed when the pandemic first hit back in March. Some have remained closed since then… others have reopened, only to close again once San Diego moved into the purple tier. In the first installment of a new two-part series, KPBS reporter John Carroll looks at how some of the city’s most beloved institutions are surviving COVID 19. Balboa Park… spending time here reminds you of why people call this 12-hundred acre expanse the jewel of San Diego. This lush setting is home to some of San Diego’s cultural gems… repositories of everything from priceless works of art… to some of the wonders of the industrial age… and the miracles of science. For the institutions that house all of it… the months since March have presented challenges none of them have ever had to face before. SOT 11:51:43 - 51:46 “The closures have been a very difficult thing to overcome.” That’s Michael Warburton. He works for the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership… an umbrella group representing most of the park’s museums. 11:51:34 - 51:42 “Some of the museums, this is their third time being closed. Some of the performing arts venues haven’t had performances for the public since March.” Some of the institutions are financially healthy enough to make it through to the other side of this pandemic easier than others. But for most of them, the loss of their main source of revenue… ticket sales, has meant painful decisions. 12:00:15 - 00:34 “Many of the organizations have had to go through furloughs and layoffs, really cutting back on things that they can perform or programming. It has been a challenge, needless to say for the organizations in the park and different challenges for different organizations in different ways.” 14:25:00 - 25:06 “It’s definitely been an interesting and unique experience I never thought I would have to go through… Katy Titus began her job as the San Diego Model Railroad Museum’s marketing and community engagement coordinator in June, months after the museum had closed… the first time around. The fact that the museum actually hired someone well into the pandemic was a good sign of the museum’s financial health, but… 14:26:13 - 26:17 “The train’s not stopping anytime soon, but we’re running low on coal.” The Model Railroad Museum is fortunate in one unique way… a lot of the people that work here are volunteers… folks that live and breathe model railroads. But Titus says the financial hit from being closed for most of 2020 has been considerable. Pre-pandemic, about two-thirds of the museum’s revenue came from ticket sales. Titus says having that financial stream suddenly go completely dry meant museum management had to get very creative, very quickly. 14:26:37 - 26:49 “Our membership and development manager and our executive director have worked incredibly hard to find grants and funding opportunities, but we’re still in need of donations to close the gap from eight months of closure.” Of course, it’s human nature to look for silver linings in dark times… and there are some to be found in the park. Some of the institutions here are taking advantage of this COVID downtime to do the kind of work that’s really tough when there are a lot of visitors around… for example the Timken Museum of Art where they’re doing some interior renovation work. But for now, being closed means doing things differently… like most of Balboa Park’s museums, the Model Railroad Museum has had to execute a quick pivot into the virtual world. 14:34:40 - 34:49 - 35:14 “We have two virtual exhibits, we have our online lecture series, we have member-exclusive events via zoom //BUTT TO: 14:35:02// we had our first-ever virtual summer camp where we had campers from Pennsylvania, Florida, California, everything in between learning how to build a model railroad and we’ve even gone international, delivering distance learning programs to Canada.” With news of vaccines on the horizon, plans are being made at all of Balboa Park’s museums and other attractions, to reopen. But for now - just this place… the stunning beauty of Balboa Park makes it a great place to spend some time. The Cultural Partnership’s Michael Warburton... 11:55:09 - 55:16 “If there’s any place centrally located in San Diego where you can safely distance and enjoy gardens and a nice day out, this is the place.” Even with its beloved institutions closed, this is still the jewel of San Diego. __________________________________________________________________ And that story from kpbs reporter John Carol. Tomorrow, John shows us how one of the park’s major museums is weathering the pandemic, and he’ll preview some exciting new things coming to Balboa Park in the near future. *** Thanks so much for listening to San Diego News Matters. Have a great day.