[suzzer99]

Holy crap this is messed up. https://www.kuow.org/stories/the-day...er-in-kirkland

It was odd, the firefighters thought, how many calls were coming from the Life Care nursing facility in Kirkland.

The day before, Thursday, had been especially bad. Five separate calls for respiratory distress or fever. After several calls, the firefighters masked up -- they believed something worrisome was spreading, maybe a bad flu.

But it wasn’t the flu. Through the chain of command, firefighters learned that management at Life Care said a resident and a health worker had been tested the week before for coronavirus, or COVID-19, a virus that had been especially cruel to the elderly and infirm.

Evan Hurley, a 9-year veteran with Kirkland Fire and a union trustee, said a firefighter relayed this story: On Friday, the firefighter arrived at Life Care, walked in, and saw a charge nurse in just her scrubs. No mask, no protective gown.

“Hey, you guys are supposed to be in self-quarantine,” the firefighter said.

“No, we’re not,” the nurse replied.

“Well, our chain of command talked to your management, and they say something different.”

The nurse insisted; she hadn’t heard anything, she said.

The firefighter looked down the hall and saw two caregivers in scrubs -- no mask or gown.

“What the hell?” the firefighter thought. “Who is not telling you that you have two suspected coronavirus cases?”

Hearing this news, Kevin Connolly and his wife, Jody, were shocked, he wrote on Facebook. Jody’s father was there, but Life Care had not called about a possible outbreak, he wrote.

The Connollys called Life Care, where a receptionist “told us not to believe everything you hear on the news,” Connolly said on Facebook.

Residents did not know they were living amid an outbreak, he said. Staff were given masks, but residents were not. For dinner that Saturday night, his father-in-law was given half a sweet potato.

Officials had said 10 workers from the Centers for Disease Control were supposed to fly into Seattle, and beeline for Kirkland, but the journalist hadn’t seen them. Families said they hadn't seen them either. Calls to the governor's office, public health and the CDC, have not clarified whether anyone from the CDC has come to Seattle.

Evan Hurley says many members have looked back at the logs, curious to see if there were more calls than usual from Life Care in recent weeks.

In January, firefighters responded seven times to the Life Care facility. In February, and the first five days of March, they responded 33 times.

Firefighters are now grappling with the idea that coronavirus may have already been circulating at Life Care for weeks and that they, and Life Care workers, residents and visitors, had not been warned to take precautions, And that they may have inadvertently helped spread the virus farther.

In the days leading up to last Friday, Life Care staff and first responders were using nebulizers and CPAP machines to treat patients. “We essentially aerosolized it,” one first responder said, because before last Friday, that was standard protocol to treat patients.

“We made it worse,” he said.