se habla español ents montrose p daily ress · iff ’s department at about 2 p.m., and a little...
TRANSCRIPT
MCKENZIE MOORE
Dave Frank, Roy Anderson and Barba-ra Bynum were sworn into Montrose City Council at the regular meeting on April 21. Barbara Bynum was then selected as the new mayor, and Doug Glaspell was selected as mayor pro-tem.
Bynum, who was recently re-elected to the at-large council seat, said the current top priority of Montrose City Council is to follow state and federal guidelines to
help the community reopen its businesses while maintaining health and safety.
“We want to help our community follow the state’s lead, help small businesses reopen, help people feel that their health and safety is being respected, and it’s just a balancing act that we’re always playing in local government,” she said. “� is isn’t all going to happen imme-diately and overnight, but it is very promising that we can start to look at a path forward.”
Aside from the pandemic, Bynum said her focus is on the improvements being made to public safety, including con-
struction of a new public safety facility, purchase of updated equipment and the hiring of new police offi cers this year.
“Any time that you ask your taxpayers for an increase in taxes, that comes with a huge level of responsibility,” Bynum said. “Being able to deliver on that promise is really important. People put a lot of trust in you when they vote for a tax increase, and I hope looking back, we did every-thing we can to earn their trust.”
MONTROSE PRESSDA
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montrosepress.com | Wednesday, April 22, 2020
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Se Habla Español
BY JOE LEWANDOWSKI
COLORADO PARKS AND WILDLIFE
� e wind blew hard and cold on Saturday in the upper Rio Grande Val-ley and it was not the kind of day that Chere Waters would normally pick to hike up a blustery hillside.
“I don’t know what it was, but some-thing was drawing me to go up there,” Waters said.
Whatever the mysterious calling, her intuition led her to an old mine sha� which, in turn, led to an unusual rescue of a 250-pound cow elk by Colorado Parks and Wildlife offi cers and local emergency responders on April 18.
A Creede resident for 34 years, Waters decided to go to a trail off the Bachelor Loop Road just outside of town. She told her hiking partner they would go to an area she’d been to years ago where she remembered seeing a mine sha� .
Waters said she surprised herself when she walked the mile from her vehicle right up to the opening. She saw the hole from about 10 yards away and tossed a rock in, hoping to get a sense of the depth of the sha� .
“It’s the scariest thing, it’s at the edge of some trees so it’s hard to see,” she said.
But even though she sensed some danger, she decided to look in. So she “belly crawled” on the ground and had her friend hold onto her ankles so she could peer over the edge.
“So I looked in and see this animal in there. I was so surprised, I couldn’t believe it,” Waters said.
She didn’t bring her phone but luckily her friend did. � ey contacted the sher-iff ’s department at about 2 p.m., and a little over an hour later Wildlife Offi cers Brent Woodward and Jeremy Gallegos arrived, along with Mineral County Sheriff ’s offi cers.
“When I got the call I was told that a deer was stuck in a hole,” Woodward said. “But they thought the sha� was only about 10 feet deep. When I got there I could see it was an elk and it was probably 30 feet down.”
He could also see the animal’s tracks at the edge of the hole.
Woodward darted the elk from above with a tranquilizer to knock it out tempo-rarily. � e sha� was not too far from an old four-wheel drive trail so they were able to get vehicles close. Using a winch from one of the trucks, Terry Wetherill, Mineral County emergency and search and rescue manger, was lowered into the hole. He esti-mated the size at about 10 feet by 3 feet so he had enough room to place some straps around the animal.
He said that over the years he’s pulled deer and elk out of barbed-wire fences, “but I’ve never had to pull one out of a hole.”
In 1889, miners fl ocked to Creede at the start of a silver boom. Wetherill said there are dozens of old mine sha� s in the area but most of them have col-lapsed and fi lled in over the years. He’s been told about many but not about the one where the elk fell. � e walls of the sha� are still secured with timbers; Wetherill said the opening has probably been there for more than 100 years.
“It’s dangerous, it’s in the shadows and until you’re 20 feet away you don’t see it,” he said.
See ELK page A4
Elk pulled 30 feet from
Creede mine shaft • Additional kits made
available• Increases number of tests
that can be conducted• Adragna: Hope is to remove
barriers
BY KATHARHYNN HEIDELBERG
More local medical clinics are poised to provide onsite COVID-19 testing, a� er Montrose County and Montrose Memori-al Hospital broadened test kit availability.
Starting this week, more clinics will be able to off er the tests to patients who meet criteria, Dr. Joe Adragna, Montrose County pandemic specialist and medical adviser to the county board of county health, said.
� e idea is to reduce scheduling diffi culties for those who need a test and to increase turnaround times. With only county health and a few other sites performing the tests, patients have to schedule one with those sites, instead of being able to simply visit their providers.
“We’re trying to remove as many barri-ers as possible,” Adragna said.
The public health department is in the process of sharing protocols and distributing specimen kits to the clinics and is also offering public health nurses to conduct proper collection training at them, as needed.
Providers will be able to test their
own patients and have closer followup with them, Dr. Mindy Miller of Mon-trose Trailhead Clinic said. Her offi ce has requested fi ve of the test kits and would seek more if the demand was great enough, but did not want to take more of the supplies than necessary. � e clinic received the kits Monday.
“We didn’t have any testing capability prior to this,” Miller said. “(It’s) mostly to improve the timeliness of testing and to simplify the process.”
Under the previous process, a provider
had to speak with and evaluate the patient for COVID-19 symptoms, then write an or-der for the test and send it to public health, where a nurse would then reach out to the patient to schedule the test, she explained.
“One of the problems I would see is getting test results. I never knew if the test result came back,” Miller said.
“Having the testing capability in each of the clinics will defi nitely improve effi cien-cy of care of the patient.”
See CLINICS page A4
See COUNCIL page A3
A worker in full protective gear conducts a COVID-19 test at a mass collection site in March. The county and hospital have recently been able to extend test kits to more local medical clinics for onsite collection. (Submitted photo/Erika Story/Montrose County)
County, MMH extend COVID tests to clinics
Bynum chosen as mayor
A Fresh WelcomeA Montrose city worker paints the Montrose sign on the north end of town on Tuesday, April 21. (Lauren Brant/Montrose Daily Press)
New city council discusses pandemic and future of Montrose
Wetherill is talking to offi cials at the Rio Grande National Forest offi ce and Mineral County to deter-mine ownership of the sha� so that it can be covered.
� e elk was pulled up slowly and Woodward described its condition as “pretty beat up.” He thought it could have been there for two or three days.
“It’s amazing that those ladies saw it,” Woodward said.
Back on the surface, the offi cers allowed the elk to
lie on the ground for about 15 minutes while they examined its condition. � en Gallegos adminis-tered a drug that reverses the tranquilizer eff ects. It took a few minutes for it to stand up on shaky legs.
“When she stood up, she moved a few yards, turned and looked at us for a few seconds and then turned and trotted away. It was great that we could get her out alive,” Woodward said.
Waters and her friend stayed for the rescue and took pictures. She said they were so happy that the elk survived. But Waters, who owns C. Waters Gallery in Creede, said she’s still won-dering what took her to that particular spot last Saturday.
“I was just so called to go to that place.”
Joe Lewandowski is a public information offi cer for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Southwest Regi
LOCALA4 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 2020 MONTROSE DAILY PRESS
Obituaries
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Andrew Edward Enriquez
April 6, 1945 - April 10, 2020
Andrew Edward En-riquez passed away at his home in Montrose, Colo-rado on April 10, 2020. He was 75 years old. Ed was born to Andrew Enriquez and Erminda Ulibarri on April 6, 1945 in Montrose, Colorado. He attended Montrose High School be-fore enlisting in the United States Marine Corps.
Edward completed his 4 years in the USMC as a Corporal. In that time, he earned a Purple Heart medal, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Medal, Vietnamese Service Medal, Vietnamese Cam-paign Medal and a Sharp-shooter Badge.
He lived in Southern California for many years working as an ironworker before retiring back to his
home town of Montrose. He enjoyed watching all sports and fi shing.
Ed is preceded in death by his father and mother, sister Epi Abachiche, sister Ve-ronica Jolley. He is survived by daughter Jeanina Merejil (Corey English), grand-daughter Ariya English, sisters Eliza Smith, Vivian (Elicio) Lovato, Mindy (Jim) Heard, Elizabeth(Johnny) Archuleta and Sandra(Gas-per) Archuleta.
Services will be held at a later date.
Molly WilsonMolly Wilson, 88,
of Olathe, Colorado,, passed away on April 19, 2020, at Crossroads in Delta,, CO.. Burial
was at the Mesa View Cemetery
Vocation: Homemaker Funeral Home: Tay-
lor Funeral Service and Crematory
A rescuer makes the way down the mine shaft near Creede where a hiker spotted a trapped elk. (Submitted photo/CPW/Jason Clay)
A cow elk blends with the dirt of a mine shaft from which she was rescued over the weekend. (Submitted photo/CPW)
ELKFROM PAGE A1
She said proper testing technique is important, because incorrect tech-nique can aff ect the accu-racy of test results.
“My staff will be trained to make sure they have the proper protective equip-ment and to use tech-niques to minimize the risk of them contracting the virus, and to minimize the possibility of having a false negative,” Miller said.
River Valley Family Health Center has been conducting testing for some time, but has seen an issue with accessing kits, CEO Jeremy Carroll said. � e federally qualifi ed health center recently received 20 additional kits from Mon-trose Memorial Hospital.
“River Valley is abso-lutely testing and taking care of COVID-positive patients,” Carroll said.
“Having more clinics, more providers being able to provide testing will greatly improve information around how many people truly have COVID-19. But we need more. We still need a lot more tests.”
Montrose County had conducted more than 650 tests and as of Tuesday morning, reported 79 positives and nine deaths. Test numbers change al-most immediately, as new
information and results are received, Adragna previously cautioned, plus the state health department may look at diff erent data points than county offi cials. As well, facilities where there have been outbreaks may have more current numbers than either state or county entities.
Adragna said the county is mainly sourcing its test kits through Montrose Memorial Hospital, which has also been able to effi ciently use transport media — swabs and test tubes. Although he does not anticipate a shortage of transport media, the hospital has come up with a backup plan using saline, just in case, he also said.
� e county is also work-ing to get more kits to the Basin Clinic on the West End, through either public health, the hospital or Mesa County, Adragna said.
“With our regional emergency manager, we shared best practices. � at person shared their contacts in surrounding counties and Montrose Memorial Hospital facilities people have reached out (about vendors) so that other coun-ties around us can make sure they’re able to test right now,” Adragna said, praising the hospital’s inventiveness in a time of crisis.
Miller said patients at Trailhead are well aware
of the virus and its risks. “I think people are pretty anxious about it. I think people are taking precau-tions as have been recom-mended,” she said.
Having more kits available will improve the amount of testing being done and that will help decrease uncertainty among those who fear they are infected, Miller said, pointing to a patient who had to self-quaran-tine, only to fi nd out much later that the specimen collected was negative.
“� e fact we don’t know whether someone has the virus or not, there’s quite a bit of loss of productiv-ity and time that could be spent in other ways. It would defi nitely be more helpful to be able to test more people,” Miller said.
Trailhead, River Valley and multiple other med-ical practices are off ering services via tele-health, so that people do not have to come in unless it is absolutely necessary; contact your provider for information about this op-tion. Trailhead, which is a membership-based clinic, has waived its sign-up fee during the declared pan-demic emergency, because of business closures and job losses.
Katharhynn Heidelberg is the Montrose Daily Press assistant editor and senior writer.
CLINICSFROM PAGE A1