Another Fortnight, another few re-openings around Tumbler Ridge.
On June 8, Council met to discuss how to safely re-open the facilities that were closed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic back in March.
Since that meeting, many—but not all of the facilities have reopened.
While most of the Community Centre remains closed, the gym is reopened—by appointment only—as of June 16. If you have been Jonesing to get in and work out, you can now do so. Call the Community Centre to schedule your workout: 250-242-4246, and they’ll tell you what you need to know, including how to access the gym, how to properly social distance while working out and what cleaning you are responsible for doing.
The Tumbler Ridge Library is also open as of June 16. They are currently running restricted hours—Tuesday to Thursday, 11-3 at the moment—and access to the library is from the Roman Walkway area at the south end of the building. There is no access into the rest of the Community Centre (including the washrooms) from the library at this time.
Head Librarian Paula Coutts says staff has been nervous about re-opening. “I feel we have some kind of social responsibility to be reopening,” says Coutts. “If the BC Government think the libraries are important enough to be open, then we need to play.”
However, she says, they are going to do it cautiously. “We’re not going to be the place that causes a spike in Covid cases. We’re going to do it slowly. We’re going to do it carefully. And we’re going to open on our terms with the parameters that WorkSafe BC has in place. They’ve outlined plans for libraries specifically, but in addition we’re following the general plans. We’re following the plans for retail and for retail and office, too. They all have something from each of them which applies to us. So we use the retail guidelines to gauge how many people we could have in the room because it’s the only one that actually specifies numbers per square foot that kind of thing.”
She says the primary goal is to keep people safe. “We’ll try it for a couple of weeks with reduced hours and limited days and we’ll tweak it as we go. We’ll see how it works. I didn’t expect a big run of people. When we first opened, we didn’t have a big run of people, but we have had a cross section of people. A homeschooling mom with two students. A mom and daughter looking for books. We’ve had seniors. Adults. We’ve had some avid readers who were getting a bit desperate. It’ll be slow but our goal is to do this safely.
She says that over the next few weeks, they’ll look at things that have been taken away and see if they can slowly re-introduce them. “We’ve taken away most of the seating in the library, including the benches in the kids area. Those are just more places that staff have to keep clean. So we’ve stripped the library right down to bare bones. There is no train table and no Lego table. We’ve blocked off a lot of the regular tables and put the chairs away. We do have designated areas for using your device with WiFi. Computers are being restricted to 15 minute intervals, up to a maximum of 45 minutes. Staff are doing all copying right now, and not letting clients do their own. It’s a safety precaution, so we are the only ones touching the machine. We’ve got plexiglass installed around the circulation counter. But that’s the tiniest piece of all of this.
She says it’s hard having to re-learn how to do things that libraries have been doing for decades in a new way. “We’ve had a lot of impromptu staff meetings, asking ‘what are we forgetting?’
The library has always been a place of social infrastructure, but, says Coutts, that’s not the case right now. “People come here to hang out, but that’s not happening right now. That will come—maybe in three weeks maybe four, but it will come. Programs are not going to look the same, but we’re still doing digital programming. Chris (Norbury, Children’s Librarian) is still reading online. And Summer Reading club will still happen this year. It’s going to look different, a lot of it will be digital, a lot of it will be interactive online. There’ll be author visits and story times and all kinds of things online. We don’t think we’ll be doing programs with children in the library although that may change, and particularly the children who don’t have access to the Internet or to gadgets, we may invite them, or we may have to have a draw, and maybe half a dozen kids can come in person. We could do that safely. And they could be the kids who demonstrate the crafts. So, that’s evolving, still. But at this point, no I don’t see children coming into the library and it seems that most libraries in the province, are saying no programming right now, except digital.”
Coutts says they took a page from the hardware store’s playbook. “We have bins at the end of the rows with a note that says not to put books back. leave them for us. So if somebody takes a book and then realizes it’s not one that they want, we don’t want them to shove it back onto the shelf. We would much rather they throw it in one of the bins in one of the rows, and we’ll deal with it.”
Books that are returned to the library are being held for 72 hours before they are being handled, disinfected and returned to the shelves.
“There’s no question that this is in addition to being a whole new world, it is staff and labor intensive. I mean, right now I have four staff working. And one of them has to be at the door, because we have to be monitoring people who aren’t going in and out, making sure they’re following the rules, making sure they use the sanitizer making sure they don’t have symptoms, making sure they read the 14 posters on the walls. When we start opening evenings and weekends, There’s no way I can do it with only one staff member I’m going to need two staff members, at least until the province enters phase four. I don’t think we’ll ever be totally safe but until we’re safer. I can’t have one staff member because we will still need someone at the door controlling access. And so right there, there are additional costs. We had a generous donation from Pattern Energy for all of our COVID related expenses. Our Plexiglas barriers, our gloves that we have the masks that I’ve ordered the extra printing that we’re doing and the sanitizers and soaps that we’ve got. There’s no doubt that this change to our normal way of life is expensive. And we’re not going to be able to know what it’s really going to cost us until we enter into phase four and can stay in phase four for an extended length of time. It’s impossible to predict right now. If you’d asked me two months ago if my costs would have been this high, and would I need extra staff I would have said no. But living it, and going through all the safety plans…we need to reassess our costs.”
Also opened are the Visitor Information Centre and the Museum, the latter opening on June 18. “We have been working hard to ensure we can provide safe conditions for staff, volunteers, and visitors while delivering the experiences you’ve come to enjoy,” says General Manager Zena Conlin. “We are taking an informed and phased approach to re-opening and you’ll notice a few changes in our operations this summer.”
She says keeping the workers safe was their biggest concern. “We wanted to ensure we could keep workers safe, while still providing the best experience.”
Outside of the usual Covid concessions (like hand sanitizer, directional signage and plexiglass barriers at the front desk), she’s hoping the actual experience of visiting the museum will be as strong as always. “We already offer gallery tours, and our track site tours are beginning July 9.
For now, the museum is open from Thursday to Monday, 9-6.
Starting July 9, it will be open six days a week, only closed on Wednesdays.
While the museum is open, large group tours are not allowed, and summer day camps have been cancelled for the year.
While most District facilities have reopened, at least partially, the notable exception is Willow Hall. Director of Protective Services Dustin Curry says he expects it to be open soon. “We have made contact with operators,” he says. “They are working on developing plans, with intentions to re-open in the near future. We want to be able to do this as there’s a lot of service groups that use the building.”
(Update: Willow Hall is now open.)
