City quiet on bus drivers’ deaths as state launches investigation
Mayor Alan Webber’s administration doesn’t have much to say about a COVID-19 outbreak that recently took the lives of two city bus drivers and sickened many others.
More talkative are staffers in the New Mexico Environment Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau. They are investigating the city transit system.
“Specifically, we are gathering additional information on COVID-positive cases among Santa Fe transit division workers. If information reveals the city did not take necessary steps to prevent worker exposure to COVID, NMED will take appropriate enforcement action and seek corrective measures,” agency spokeswoman Stephanie Stringer told me Tuesday.
Webber liked to say his most important job was keeping the city safe. It was a promise and a sound bite during his successful reelection campaign.
This was before two unidentified bus drivers died of COVID19, a third was hospitalized and an undisclosed number of others were infected.
Webber’s administration wouldn’t discuss the routes drivers traveled, when they were infected, if they were vaccinated or when they last worked. “We’re not releasing any information out of respect to the families,” said Thomas Martinez, operations director of the Santa Fe Trails Bus System.
Employees working in public transportation should not be clouded in mystery, especially during a pandemic.
I asked Martinez if riders or others who came in contact with bus drivers could be at risk of illness.
“They’re not in any more risk than if they were in a grocery store,” he said.
He said he didn’t know of any hometown groceries where two employees had recently died of COVID-19 and another required hospitalization. A store with a record like that would have been shuttered at least until a deep cleaning was completed.
Martinez said bus riders don’t come in close contact with drivers. A barrier separates them when a
customer boards.
“They drop their fare and go to the back,” he said.
I had more questions. Martinez, who makes $111,400 a year, didn’t want to hear them. He referred me to the city’s main spokesman, David Herndon.
Herndon told me Martinez said he’d already answered my questions. Not so. A clunky conversation followed with Herndon, who makes $77,000 a year.
He said there was no reason to believe members of the public were at risk, provided they observed what he called “COVID-safe practices.”
Unexplained was how so many bus drivers were infected if the city’s own procedures were a model of safety.
Herndon said the infections occurred “at least two weeks ago” and one driver had underlying health problems. He would not say if this was one of the two who died.
An older bus rider had phoned me to say she expected some sort of alert from the city, given the severity of the breakout involving bus drivers. The timeline of infections and hospitalizations was murky. I wanted a better understanding of when they began.
Herndon had heard enough. He cut off our phone interview, then sent an email telling me to submit my questions in writing.
The city’s information blackout contrasts with the forthright system used by the Santa Fe Public Schools.
Their administrators notify the public when a student or employee tests positive for COVID-19. The infected person’s school is identified, and the last day he or she was on campus is pinpointed. Whatever deficiencies exist in the school system’s notifications are insignificant compared to the city’s opaque style.
How more information could possibly be bad for the public is the question Webber should ask himself and his subordinates.
At least a few hundred bus drivers across the country have died of COVID-19. Many drove school buses and were not vaccinated.
Another championed safety on public transportation. He was Jason Hargrove, a city bus driver in Detroit. Hargrove last year said a woman on his bus coughed four or five times without covering her mouth.
So incensed was Hargrove that he posted a video on Facebook to denounce risky behavior in his workplace. He died 11 days later of complications of COVID-19. He was 50 years old.
The case in Detroit exploded into an international story. At home in Santa Fe, the bus system’s surge in COVID-19 infections is filled with questions.
At least it will receive attention from the state, if not the city. Carefulness costs nothing, though it might come too late this time.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.