Published January 09. 2021 1:46AM
DANBURY (AP) Federal lawmakers from Connecticut demanded answers Friday from the warden of the federal prison in Danbury after they say they learned first responders were denied access during one of two natural gas leaks within the past two months.
Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and Rep. Jahana Hayes said they sent a letter to Warden Diane Easter asking questions and calling for an “immediate assessment” of gas piping and other critical infrastructure at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, which houses more than 800 inmates, many of them women.
The Democratic lawmakers said in a statement there were gas leaks on Nov. 13 and Dec. 26. Eversource crews repaired the Nov. 13 leak, but the company s workers and Danbury firefighters were denied access on Dec. 26 and weren t let in until the next day, the legislators said.
eizzo@adirondackdailyenterprise.com The workload facing local hospitals and county health departments is on track to becoming unsustainable. Health care officials are imploring residents to take precautions to curb the spread before that happens. In a virtual press conference on Friday, multiple doctors from University of Vermont Health Network hospitals and public health directors from around Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties warned that the local COVID-19 caseload was beginning to stress the operations of both hospitals and county health departments. This comes at a time when rural hospitals have already faced significant financial challenges. Before the pandemic, some North Country hospitals were merging and downsizing. Last spring, those financial challenges were compounded when hospitals were directed to cancel elective surgeries for several weeks, cutting off a vital revenue-generator for rural health care facilities that care for a relatively large number of patients
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Since December, the Lompoc prisons have suspended visiting at the facilities for an undetermined length of time.
The Lompoc federal penitentiary has 851 medium-security inmates plus another 317 at the minimum-security prison camps on site. The neighboring FCI houses 902 low-security inmates.
COVID-19 cases have been rising on the Central Coast, both inside and outside jails and prisons, in recent weeks.
The California Men’s Colony, a state prison in San Luis Obispo, has had 1,755 confirmed cases since the pandemic began. Currently, the CMC has 941 active cases in custody after seeing few during the early months of COVID-19 last spring.
CT Lawmakers: Prison Denied Entry to Firefighters During Gas Leak fireengineering.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from fireengineering.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
eizzo@adirondackdailyenterprise.com The North Country is seeing more confirmed COVID-19 cases than ever before, and the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 across the seven-county region rose to 102 on Thursday, with 17 new hospitalizations overnight. Just one month ago on Dec. 7, 2020, the number of people hospitalized in this region was 38. Of the people currently hospitalized, 45 are in intensive care units, with approximately 18 ICU beds left available region-wide, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office. With the capacity of all of the hospitals in the North Country combined, about 33% of hospital beds were available as of Thursday. The number of hospitalizations region-wide doesn’t yet appear to meet the threshold outlined by Cuomo last month that would trigger a partial economic shutdown, though according to the Associated Press, places such as Albany and Oneida counties haven’t yet seen more restrictions imposed despite having some of the highest hosp