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Show B-1 INSIDE THIS EDITION! Check out our latest Home magazine for tips about how to turn your home into a summer sanctuary. WITH NEW DOCUMENTARY, A SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL VETERAN VENTURES INTO ‘THE WILD’ COLUMNS, A-12 HUMAN CONNECTION, AT LAST SCENE & HEARD, B-5 FRESH BEGINNING FOR FARMERS MARKET Park Record. The PA R K C I T Y, U TA H Serving Summit County since 1880 | W W W. PA R K R E C O R D . C O M Vol. 140 | No. 40 Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, June 20-23, 2020 $1.00 Arts festival, a staple, canceled Masks seem to Virus concerns cited in decision to nix the widely popular event JAY HAMBURGER The Park Record Park City Kimball Arts Festival organizers on Thursday canceled the event based on concerns about the continued spread of the novel coronavirus, making the decision even as the organization was locked in talks with City Hall about holding the festival in a manner designed to protect public health. The Kimball Art Center re- leased a one-page prepared statement describing uncertainty regarding regulations designed to combat the sickness and concerns about the health of the artists and the crowd. “We were willing to make significant changes and scale back the event dramatically to ensure health and safety while also supporting artists, local businesses, and boosting our economy,” Dan Lemaitre, the chairman of the Kimball Art Center board of directors, said in the statement. “In the end though, the ability to ensure and enforce social distancing and other safety measures among Please see Arts fest, A-11 be oh-so-April on Main Street Dearth of face coverings seen in pedestrian zone, prompting stern criticism from elected officials JAY HAMBURGER The Park Record PARK RECORD FILE PHOTO Park City Kimball Arts Festival organizers on Thursday announced the cancellation of this year’s event due to concerns about the novel coronavirus. Sliding into a new season The novel coronavirus continues to spread in Utah. And as a weekly pedestrian zone debuted last Sunday on Main Street, the shopping, dining and entertainment strip drew some of the largest crowds since the coronavirus-forced early end to the ski season. But to the overwhelming majority of the crowd on Main Street on Sunday, wearing masks was oh-so-April. Masks have frequently been seen in public life and workplaces across Park City since the spring, as the spread of the illness widened and the community became the location of one of the first concentrations of cases in the state. As midsummer nears, though, there has seemed to be less willingness to wear masks in public places or some large businesses. Park City leaders approved the Sunday pedestrian zone on Main Street for the summer and into September as a way to boost business, but also with the hopes that the vehicle-less extra space for pedestrians would help combat the spread of the coronavirus. There was space to move about to avoid close contact with others on Main Street on Sunday, but there is also worry the small number of people wearing masks in the pedestrian zone could lead to further coronavirus cases. Please see Masks, A-2 Mining relic, fallen, may regain glory TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD The Utah Olympic Park’s alpine slide is back this summer after a three-year hiatus during which improvements like new sun shades and revamped sleds were installed. The Utah Olympic Park, a popular destination for visitors and Parkites, opened for the summer earlier this month. Contact tracers are on the front lines Job can be overwhelming, they say, but it’s a key part of countering COVID-19 ALEXANDER CRAMER The Park Record Normally, physical therapist Lauren Brey treats patients recovering from procedures like knee surgeries by assigning exercises, encouraging successes and helping people back to their ordinary lives. But in these extraordinary times, Brey was one of 16 Intermountain Healthcare employees asked to support the statewide fight against COVID-19 by becoming a contact tracer, someone who tracks people who have been diagnosed with the disease, or people who have come into close contact with those people. The job requires sequestering in a confidential spot — for Brey, the upstairs bedroom where she can’t be overheard by her husband and kids downstairs — and making dozens of phone calls to strangers. Contact tracers sometimes deliver the jarring news that people may have come into contact with COVID-19, or that they have tested positive. And they ask personal questions about where a person has been in the previous week, what they have been doing and with whom. Brey said the hardest part of the job is 2 sections • 24 pages Classifieds .............................. B-6 Editorial.................................. A-9 Restaurant Guide.................. B-13 Weather .................................. B-2 when she is the first to tell a patient of a positive diagnosis, especially if that person has a complicated medical situation that might make them more susceptible to serious complications. “It was a scary thing for people who had these comorbidities. As the person on the phone, it’s hard, you know, you sympathize with them,” Brey said. “I had one individual (say), ‘I just don’t want to die.’” Brey is not normally required to break the news of a positive diagnosis, but rather to track down the people that someone has been in contact with. A contact is defined as anyone who has been within 6 feet of a person with COVID-19 for more than 10 minutes in the prior seven days. The system is set up that every contact who has a symptom of COVID-19 can receive a test for the disease. Those who are asymptomatic are advised to quarantine for 14 days. Brey said her work as a physical therapist had some parallels to being a contact tracer. “The reality is with contact tracing there is no accountability outside me contacting them. After that, they have to make the decision to do it,” she said. “It’s the same with (physical therapy). We can give people exercise but unless they believe it, what we do in clinic is not going to make any difference.” But she said that those who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 appear to take the guidelines very seriously. According to data from Intermountain, there are about 1,200 people doing this work around the state, including many who work for local and state health departments. Stephanie Hurt, a registered nurse who works for Summit County, is another one of them. Normally, she describes her job as taking care of the community in the way that someone might take care of an individual patient — assessing how communicable diseases like STDs or tuberculosis are spreading through the county or helping efforts to stop a potential food poisoning outbreak at a local restaurant. Her life, too, was changed by the pandemic, as she adapted to become a contact tracer, calling people to help answer their questions and lessen the effects of the deadly disease. The work of contact tracers like Brey and Hurt has come into focus in recent weeks as the fight against COVID-19 in Summit County has shifted from an initial onslaught to a more managed phase in which officials are targeting known cases and their contacts to stem the disease’s spread. Hurt said the early days when Summit County was the state’s epicenter of COVID-19 were overwhelming. The information would change constantly, making it hard to reassure patients. “It was scary, and what was, I think, the most heartbreaking is that people were scared,” she said. “... We had a lot of questions and we didn’t have all the answers. And so (it was) trying to reassure them with what we knew and keeping calm so that they Please see Contact, A-2 Deer Valley acquires Daly West head frame, which stood as icon of bygone era before collapse JAY HAMBURGER The Park Record The head frame of the Daly West Mine collapsed in 2015, leaving the hulking steel structure on the ground in plain sight of Deer Valley Resort skiers, hikers and guests at the nearby Montage Deer Valley. The fall of the derrick-like head frame, for some, was another reminder, and one that was especially dramatic, of the frailty of Park City’s silver-mining heritage. It is believed the 85-foot-tall head frame was built sometime in 1914 or shortly after that year at the top of the Daly West Mine shaft, replacing a wooden one destroyed in a fire. It remained as one of the community’s most prominent mining-era structures as the ski industry rose to prominence in recent decades. Please see Fallen relic, A-11 PARK RECORD FILE PHOTO The hulking Daly West Mine head frame was left on the ground after the 2015 collapse. The saturation of the soil, the instability of the ground at the location and what was a mild winter of 2014-2015 that did not result in a deep frost left the 45-ton structure especially vulnerable. CORONAVIRUS TRACKER Summit County Utah Known cases: 455 Hospitalizations: 41; Deaths: 0 Known cases: 16,425 Hospitalizations: 1,145; Deaths: 155 DATA AS OF JUNE 19, SOURCE: UTAH DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH |