Letters: Hot Springs?, and Glenwood open for business – Glenwood Springs Post Independent

Letters: Hot Springs?, and Glenwood open for business – Glenwood Springs Post Independent

By Anne Rowe for DPS board, April 10, 2020

What safety measures is Hot Springs Pool taking?

There was a very inviting photo of the Glenwood Hot Springs Pool in your cover of the Post Independent on Thursday. It is alarming that the hot springs have not made any comments on the safety measures they’re taking, and do we know if the water itself is safe?

Verónica Whitney

Carbondale

Signal that Glenwood Springs is not open for business


As a Glenwood Springs resident, I’m deeply concerned about the current community response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On Thursday, I read an article in the Post Independent that more or less said Glenwood Springs is open for business as usual and looking forward to welcoming tourists for Spring Break.

This invites unnecessary risk into our community.

There is an assumption by many in the general public that if it’s open, it’s “safe,” that if the government doesn’t cancel an event or close a public space, there’s no need to. This gives people a false sense of security that is not going to benefit our community. It’s simply a lack of awareness and understanding. People need direction.

By actively inviting the larger public into our town at this time, we are unnecessarily increasing our community’s risk of exposure via groups of people coming into our community. And as Governor Polis pointed out in his press release on Wednesday, small-town mountain communities like ours “will be hit hardest first,” due to “limited surge capacity.” Our local hospital, as great as it is, only has so many beds. For serious cases they can’t handle, there’s only one helicopter, flying one patient at a time over to Denver.

We need to send a signal that Glenwood Springs is not open for business as usual this Spring Break. The Hot Springs Pool, Iron Mountain Hot Springs, and Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park should all consider temporarily closing in order to send that message.

Colorado Mountain College, the local K-12 schools, and the public facilities in Glenwood Springs have already closed. Moreover, Eagle, Garfield, and Pitkin Counties have issued a Public Health order to minimize the health impacts of COVID-19 which prohibits large gatherings and events of more than 50 people. Perhaps it’s time for the business leadership in our community to fall in line with the intention of this order, even if it doesn’t specifically apply to them. We are a strong community, but we need to stand together and protect our most vulnerable members right now.

Gretchen Hayduk-Wroblewski,

Glenwood Springs