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Our photographer captured Austin residents around town on the day after the mayor announced he would require fabric face coverings in public. (Charlie L. Harper III)
The day after the city of Austin extended its stay-at-home order, adding that members of the public will be required to wear fabric face coverings in public places, Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said that masks will be a way of life in Austin for quite a while in response to the coronavirus epidemic.
"The requirement for facial coverings is likely to be a longstanding requirement," he said at a virtual press conference today. "Nobody expects that this thing is going to go away."
Escott said that the peak of COVID-19 cases in Austin will depend on how well residents adhere to the requirements in the stay-at-home order, and that city officials are trying to buy time to acquire more testing equipment, personal protective equipment and contact-tracing capabilities.
He said that things could go back to normal when there is an effective treatment and vaccine in place. In the meantime, a population comfortable with wearing masks could make it possible to gradually relax restrictions.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler said today at the press conference that masks were not necessary for outdoor activities such as jogging or walking, as long as the individual is either alone or with members of their household. The covering can also be removed while eating or drinking.
The fabric face coverings are not meant to protect the individual wearing the mask, but rather those nearby, in case the individual has an asymptomatic COVID-19 infection. The masks are not a replacement for maintaining a physical distance, officials have said.
In his April 6 "Got a Minute?" video post, Adler demonstrated two ways to make a mask from t-shirt material, with no sewing, in less than a minute.
It has been difficult to find masks at Austin stores, but there are hundreds of videos on YouTube showing how to make your own. On the local social networking platform NextDoor, many neighbors post that they are making masks for the community, often providing them at no cost. Etsy, an e-commerce site focused on handcrafted items, has over 350,000 listings for "masks."
Adler calls it a moral requirement to protect workers such as store clerks.
Kasey Pfaff, an employee at an Austin Home Depot, said that before this new facial covering order, she found herself reacting a little differently to customers walking into the store wearing a mask and those who were not wearing one. She is glad that customers should now all be wearing masks.
"It makes us feel like people are doing their jobs," she said. "They're protecting us."
Pfaff has an autoimmune condition that puts her at a higher risk of COVID-19 complications. She also needs to avoid bringing the coronavirus home to her roommate or over to her elderly mother's house.
She has been wearing a mask and gloves herself, and she knows it is not always easy. Her glasses fog up, and they fall off when she bends over. Sometimes she has to talk on the phone at work, and that is hard while wearing a mask. Yet she considers the mask mandate important both now and as Austin moves through other phases of the crisis.
"I see it just as much as a reassurance about the future," she said. "That everyone is doing this is a signal that Austin is trying to get back on its feet."
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(Jordan Vonderhaar/The Texas Tribune)
The Texas Senate Democratic Caucus is urging Gov. Greg Abbott to call an emergency special legislative session to consider a variety of gun restrictions and safety measures in the wake of a mass school shooting in Uvalde that left 19 children and two adults dead this week.
In a letter released Saturday morning, all 13 Senate Democrats demanded lawmakers pass legislation that raises the minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21 years old. The Uvalde gunman was 18 and had purchased two AR-style rifles which he used in the attack.
The caucus is also calling for universal background checks for all firearm sales, “red flag” laws that allow a judge to temporarily remove firearms from people who are considered an imminent threat to themselves or others, a “cooling off period” for the purchase of a firearm and regulations on high capacity magazines for citizens.
“Texas has suffered more mass shootings over the past decade than any other state. In Sutherland Springs, 26 people died. At Santa Fe High School outside Houston, 10 people died. In El Paso, 23 people died at a Walmart. Seven people died in Midland-Odessa,” the letter reads. “After each of these mass killings, you have held press conferences and roundtables promising things would change. After the slaughter of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, those broken promises have never rung more hollow. The time to take real action is now.”
Such laws are unlikely to gain traction in the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has a track record of favoring legislation that loosens gun restrictions. Only the governor has the power to call lawmakers back into a special session for emergency work.
Asked about a special session at a Friday press conference in Uvalde, Abbott said “all options are on the table” adding that he believed laws would ultimately be passed to address this week’s horrors. However, he suggested laws would be more tailored toward addressing mental health, rather than gun control.
“You can expect robust discussion and my hope is laws are passed, that I will sign, addressing health care in this state,” he said, “That status quo is unacceptable. This crime is unacceptable. We’re not going to be here and do nothing about it.”
He resisted the idea of increasing the age to purchase a firearm, saying that since Texas became a state, 18-year-olds have been able to buy a gun.
He also dismissed universal background checks saying existing background check policies did not prevent the Santa Fe and Sutherland Springs shootings, which both happened while he has been in office.
“If everyone wants to seize upon a particular strategy and say that’s the golden strategy right there, look at what happened in the Santa Fe shooting,” he said. “A background check had no relevance because the shooter took the gun from his parents…Anyone who suggests we should focus on background checks as opposed to mental health, I suggest is mistaken.”
Since the massacre at Robb Elementary School, the governor’s comments about potential solutions have centered around increasing mental health services, rather than restricting access to firearms.
This story has been edited for length.
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(Project Connect)
Designs for stations along Project Connect’s Blue Line were presented this week, giving a detailed look at what part of the rail system extending from downtown to the airport could look like.
The planned stations that have gotten the latest focus include Waterfront, Travis Heights and Lakeshore stations past Lady Bird Lake.
At the Waterfront station, the preliminary design aims to prevent visual obstructions and save on costs. This is accomplished by a transit guideway that will lower from the bridge to a level station.
Heading onto East Riverside Drive, the light rail faces a curve requiring a slow down to about 10 miles per hour.
The Travis Heights station could involve relocating a pedestrian crosswalk zone at Alameda Drive to Blunn Creek. Since light rails can't effectively operate on a steep grade, this allows the transit guideway to avoid that.
From there, the rail will extend to the Norwood Park area, and though it will reach along the right-of-way zone, the park will be able to remain open.
A view of the Blue Line by Lady Bird Lake. (Project Connect)
The line involves some coordination with the Texas Department of Transportation. That's because the department is working on an intersection that will have to be built before the phasing of the section of the Blue Line involving an I-35 crossing.
When it comes to the safety of cyclists and walkers, design ideas include a pedestrian hybrid beacon by East Bouldin Creek that would provide a protected signal to cross. And for the intersection TxDOT is carrying out, Project Connect is working with them on pedestrian access across the intersection. It could involve shared use paths along the street and crossings beneath it.
This summer, the public can expect 30% of design and cost estimates to be released. Though the project was $7.1 billion when voters approved it in November 2020, the latest estimates factoring in inflation and supply chain constraints show it could ultimately be upwards of $10 billion.
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