Uganda's Kanungu cult massacre that killed 700 followers

Twenty years on, the whereabouts of (from L to R) Ursula Komuhangi, Credonia Mwerinde, Joseph Kibwetere and Dominic Kataribabo are unknown
By Patience Atuhaire BBC News, Kanungu 17 March 2020

Judith Ariho does not shed any tears as she recalls the church massacre in which her mother, two siblings and four other relatives were among at least 700 people who died.

Exactly 20 years ago, in south-western Uganda's Kanungu district, they were locked inside a church, with the doors and windows nailed shut from the outside. It was then set alight.

Two decades on, the horror of the event is still too much for Ms Ariho, who appears to only be able to cope with the trauma by closing herself off from the emotion.

This still from archive footage shows the ruins of the church in the wake of the fire

The dead were members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God - a doomsday cult that believed the world would come to an end at the turn of the millennium.

"The end of present times", as one of its books phrased it, came two-and-a-half months later, on 17 March 2000.

Twenty years later, no-one has been prosecuted in connection with the massacre and the cult leaders, if they are alive, have never been found.

BBC

Everything was covered in smoke, soot and the stench of burnt flesh. It seemed to go right to your lungs"Anna Kabeireho
Neighbour

Anna Kabeireho, who still lives on a hillside that overlooks the land that the cult owned, has not forgotten the smell that engulfed the valley that Friday morning.

"Everything was covered in smoke, soot and the stench of burnt flesh. It seemed to go right to your lungs," she recalls.

"Everybody was running into the valley. The fire was still going. There were dozens of bodies, burnt beyond recognition.

"We covered our noses with aromatic leaves to ward off the smell. For several months afterwards, we could not eat meat."

Kanungu is a fertile and peaceful region of green hills and deep valleys, covered in small farms broken up by homesteads.

BBC/PATIENCE ATUHAIRE

The journey down into the valley that was once the headquarters of the Movement has to be taken by foot.

From down there, it is easy to see how the religious community would have maintained their lives away from the eyes of neighbours.

Birdsong bounces off the hills and there is the sound of a waterfall in the near distance. It is the ideal setting for a contemplative existence.

But nothing remains of the building that was doused in petrol and set alight. At the edge of the spot where it stood is a long mound of soil, the only marker for the mass grave in which the remains from the inferno were buried.
Defrocked priests and nuns

The faithful had been drawn by the charismatic leaders Credonia Mwerinde, a former bartender and sex worker, and ex-government employee Joseph Kibwetere, who said that they had had visions of the Virgin Mary in the 1980s.

They registered the Movement as a group whose aim was to obey the Ten Commandments and preach the word of Jesus Christ.

Christian icons were prominent in the Movement's compound and the cult had tenuous links to Roman Catholicism with its leadership dominated by a number of defrocked priests and nuns, including Ursula Komuhangi and Dominic Kataribabo.I

Christian iconography was found in one of the compound's buildings after the fire

Believers lived mostly in silence, occasionally using signs to communicate.

Questions would be sent to Mwerinde in writing. Known as "the programmer", she is said to have been the mastermind behind how the establishment run, and would write back with answers.

Ms Ariho, 41, joined the Movement with her family when she was 10.

Her widowed mother was struggling to raise three children, one of whom suffered from persistent headaches. Kibwetere's group offered prayer and a sense of belonging, she says.

The self-sustaining community would take in whole families, providing for their every need. The members grew their own food, ran schools, and used their skills to contribute labour.

BBC

We did everything possible to avoid sin. Sometimes, if you sinned, they would command you to recite the rosary 1,000 times"Judith Ariho
Former cult member

Ms Ariho's family hosted a branch of the church with about 100 members in their compound, 2km (1.2 miles) outside the town of Rukungiri.

"Life rotated around prayer, although we also farmed," she says.

"We did everything possible to avoid sin. Sometimes, if you sinned, they would command you to recite the rosary [an entreaty to God] 1,000 times.

"You had to do it, and also ask friends and family to help, until you had served your punishment."

Devotion to the Movement regularly involved pilgrimage to a steep, rocky hill nearby. After a tough hike through a eucalyptus forest, hanging onto rocks and grabbing at tufts of grass, the faithful would reach a rock that they believed depicted the Virgin Mary.

Followers of the Movement believed that this rock resembled the Virgin Mary

As we walk through her village, she points to the homesteads of the immediate neighbours. "Over there, they lost a mother and her 11 children, and in that home, a mother and her eight children died too," she says, shifting her gaze to the ground.

Ms Ariho had not travelled to Kanungu as by 2000 she had married into a family who were not part of the Movement.

But she remembers that the leaders had an omniscient grip on the faithful, saying that Mwerinde and Komuhangi seemed to be aware of every sin that had been committed in the far-flung outlets of the church.

When a follower broke the rules, the two women would shed tears of blood, she says.


But it appears that the cult leaders may have also engaged in murder and torture before the final massacre.

In Kanungu, there are numerous wide and deep pits where dozens of bodies, thought to have been dumped over several years, were retrieved days after the blaze.

At the back of what seems like a ruined office building are two more pits, said to have been torture chambers. Pits were also found near other branches of the church.

What turned ordinary members of society into murderous cult leaders is still not clear.

Before his apparitions, Kibwetere had been a successful man, and a regular member of the Roman Catholic community.

How the BBC reported on the massacre
The people behind the cult
Priest who 'murdered' his flock
Quiet cult's doomsday deaths
Picture gallery: Relatives mourn

Topher Shemereza, now a local government official, saw him as a father figure.

"He was an upright member of the community and a shrewd businessman. I did not have a job when I finished university, so he offered me a deal to transport local moonshine, which we sold in the neighbouring districts," he explains.

A few years on, Kibwetere informed his protégé that he would no longer sell alcohol. The older man and his fellow cult leaders spent a fortnight in Mr Shemereza's government-issued house right up until the night they set off for Kanungu, where they would establish the Movement's headquarters.

"That was the last time I ever saw him. The man I knew was not a murderer. Something must have changed in him," he says.

copyright BBC/PATIENCE ATUHAIRE

The remains of some of the Movement's buildings can still be seen

After the Movement's foundation, word of Kibwetere and his religion spread across south-west Uganda and beyond.

The community was not closed off from the rest of society, and several people in positions of authority - including policemen and local government officials - were aware of its activities. But little action was taken against the cult before the inferno.

Although Interpol issued notices for the arrest of six cult leaders in April 2000, it is still not known if any of them died in the fire or whether they are living in hiding.

A 2014 Uganda police report indicated that Kibwetere may have fled the country. But others doubt that he was well enough to do this.
No memorial

Spiritual movements that bear the hallmarks of the Kanungu cult, where devotees unquestioningly believe their pastors can resurrect the dead or that holy water will heal ailments, have continued to emerge across the continent.

BBC

The Kanungu cult pointed out the evils of the time… and preached a renewal or re-commitment to the faith"Dr Paddy Musana
Makerere University

Their appeal is clear, according to Dr Paddy Musana of Makerere University's Department of Religion and Peace Studies.

"When there is strain or a need which cannot be easily met by existing institutions like traditional faiths or government, and someone emerges claiming to have a solution, thousands will rally around them," he tells the BBC.

"The Kanungu cult pointed out the evils of the time… and preached a renewal or re-commitment to the faith."

Dr Musana adds that one need not look too far to find a similar thread in the messages of today's self-proclaimed prophets.

"The 'Jesus industry' has become an investment venture. Today's preachers talk about health and wellness, because of the numerous diseases, and a public health system that barely functions," says the academic.

He argues that the government needs to do more in overseeing these spiritual movements.

Two decades on, the 48-acre plot at Kanungu is now being used as a tea plantation, but local businessman Benon Byaruhanga says he has plans to turn parts of it into a memorial.

So far, the dead at Kanungu have never been officially remembered. Those who lost family members have never got any answers.

"We pray for our people on our own. We bear our pain in silence," Ms Ariho says, reflecting on the deaths of her mother and siblings.

The 'climate doomers' preparing for society to fall apart
By Jack Hunter BBC News 16 March 2020

An article by a British professor that predicts the imminent collapse of society, as a result of climate change, has been downloaded over half a million times. Many mainstream climate scientists totally reject his claims, but his followers are already preparing for the worst.

As the last light of the late-winter sunset illuminates her suburban back garden, Rachel Ingrams is looking at the sky and pondering how long we have left.

Her hands shielded from the gusts of February air by a well-worn pair of gardening gloves, Rachel carefully places tree spinach and scarlet pimpernel seeds into brown plastic pots.

Over the past year, Rachel, 45, has invested in a greenhouse and four bright blue water butts, and started building a raised vegetable patch out of planks of wood. It's all part of an effort to rewild her garden and become as close to self-sufficient as she can, while society continues to function.

Within the next five to 10 years, she says, climate change is going to cause it to fall apart. "I don't see things lasting any longer than that."

So every evening, after picking up her children from school and returning to their former council house, she spends about two hours working outside.

"I find the more I do it, the less anxious I am," she says. "It's better than just sitting in the living room looking at the news and thinking, 'Oh God, climate change is happening, what do we do?'"

Rachel is unsure about how much to tell her three daughters. "I don't say to them that in five years we won't be here," she tells me. "But they do accept that food will be difficult to find."

Every six weeks, she takes her two youngest daughters on an 450-mile round trip from their home in Sheffield to an organic farm in South Wales, where they learn how to forage for food. It's vital for them to learn "skills we'll be able to use in the natural world when all our systems have broken down," she says.

"I don't think what they're learning in school is the right stuff any more, given what we're facing. They need to be learning permaculture [self-sufficient agriculture] and other stuff, ancient stuff that we've forgotten how to do. We just go to Tesco."

But she's not at all confident her efforts will make much difference, in the long run. "I don't think we can save the human race," she says, "but hopefully we can leave the planet with some organic life."

Around a year ago, a video of a talk by a British professor called Jem Bendell appeared on Rachel's Twitter feed.

"As soon as I saw it, everything seemed to make sense in a terrifying way," Rachel says.

"It felt like a bolt from the blue: 'We're all going to die.' I felt it in my bones that we are at the beginning of the end."  

Bendell, a professor in sustainable leadership at the University of Cumbria, is the author of an academic article, Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, which has become the closest thing to a manifesto for a generation of self-described "climate doomers".

In it, he argues that it is too late for us to avoid "the inevitability of societal collapse" caused by climate change. Instead, we are facing a "near-term" breakdown of civilisation - near-term meaning within about a decade.

The paper was rejected for publication by a peer-reviewed journal, whose reviewers said its language was "not appropriate for an academic article".

It is certainly unconventional, with its disturbing descriptions of what's to come. "You won't know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to death," Bendell writes.

After the journal's rejection, in July 2018 Bendell self-published the 34-page article online.

It soon went viral. It has now been downloaded over half a million times, translated into a dozen languages, and sparked a global movement with thousands of followers - called Deep Adaptation, because Bendell calls on people to adapt their lifestyle to cope with the harsh conditions in his vision of the future.

But Bendell's stark predictions have been dismissed by prominent climate scientists.

Prof Michael Mann, one of the world's most renowned, describes Bendell's paper as "pseudo-scientific nonsense".

Image copyrightALAMY

"To me, the Bendell paper is a perfect storm of misguidedness and wrongheadedness," Mann says. "It is wrong on the science and its impacts. There is no credible evidence that we face 'inevitable near-term collapse'."

What's more, Mann claims, Bendell's "doomist framing" is "disabling" and will "lead us down the very same path of inaction as outright climate change denial. Fossil fuel interests love this framing." Bendell is, he says, "a poster child for the dangerous new strain of crypto-denialism".

Myles Allen, professor of Geosystem Science at the University of Oxford, is just as critical.

"Predictions of societal collapse in the next few years as a result of climate change seem very far-fetched," he tells me.

"So far, the system's responded to greenhouse gas emissions almost exactly as predicted. So to say it's about to change and become much worse is speculation.

"Honestly this kind of material is at the level of science of the anti-vax campaign."

Allen agrees with Mann that the paper's pessimism is liable to make people feel powerless. "Lots of people are using this kind of catastrophism to argue that there's no point in reducing emissions," he says.

Bendell rejects the scientists' claims and says people have been inspired by his paper to demand radical government measures to tackle climate change.

"I hope Michael Mann gets to meet some more climate activists on the streets, so he can meet the new breed of fearless people taking peaceful direct action after being moved by uncompromising assessments of our situation," he says. "Many of the leaders of Extinction Rebellion read my paper and quit their jobs to go full time to try to reduce harm and save what we can." 

Other climate scientists say they have more time for Bendell.

"With global emissions continuing to rise, and no signs that the Paris targets will be respected, Jem Bendell has some justification in taking the strong position that it is already too late and we'd better prepare to deal with the collapse of the globalised economic system," says Prof Will Steffen, from Australia's Climate Change Council.

"Jem may, in fact, be 'ahead of the game' in warning us about what we might need to prepare for."

He adds that there is a "credible risk" that even a 2C rise in global average temperatures above pre-industrial levels could initiate a "a tipping cascade... taking our climate system out of our control and on to a Hothouse Earth state".

"I can't say for sure that Jem Bendell is right… but we certainly can't rule it out."

In its bleak forecasts and direct language, Bendell's paper has had an electrifying effect on many who have read it. Almost 10,000 people have joined a "Positive Deep Adaptation" Facebook group and about 3,000 are members of an online forum.

Here, the movement's followers exchange ideas about how they can adapt their lives, businesses and communities in accordance with Deep Adaptation doctrine.

In the paper, Bendell proposes a "Deep Adaptation Agenda" - a conceptual roadmap for how to cope with the economic, political and environmental shocks he believes are coming our way.

He urges people to think about the aspects of our current way of life we will be able to hold on to and those we will have to let go of, referring to these two ideas as Resilience and Relinquishment.

He also talks about a third R, Restoration, which refers to old skills and habits that we will have to bring back. For some, such as Rachel, "restoration" means rewilding their gardens and local neighbourhoods, learning foraging skills and imagining how to survive in a world without electricity.

For others it's about leaving the city or heavily populated areas of the country and heading for the hills.

Lionel Kirbyshire, a 60-year-old former chemicals engineer, says he began getting deeply worried about the climate a few years ago. He read, among other things, some of the writings of Guy MacPherson, a controversial American scientist unaffiliated to Deep Adaptation, who predicts humans will be extinct by 2030.

His head was soon "boiling with all this information that no-one wants to know".

"There was a moment about a year ago when it hit me and I thought, 'We're in big trouble,'" he says. "When you look at the whole picture it's terrifying. I think we've got 10 years, but we'll be lucky to make it."

 

LIONEL KIRBYSHIRE and Jill Kirbyshire, enjoying the wide open spaces of Fife

A few months after reading the Deep Adaptation paper, Lionel and his wife, Jill, decided to move north. They sold their house in densely populated Bedfordshire and relocated to a three-bedroom terraced house in the small town of Cupar, Fife.

"In the back of my mind, [I think] when the crunch comes, there'll be a lot of people in a small area and it's going to be mayhem - and we'll be safer if we move further north because it's colder."

They expect their grown-up children will join them in the coming years. In the meantime Lionel is investing in some growing boxes, in order to create raised vegetable beds in his garden, a foraging manual and water purification tablets.

"We're not stockpiling food but as the years go on I can't see us having much left."

Some of Rachel Ingrams' books about foraging and self-sufficiency

Another Deep Adaptation follower, who didn't want his name to be published, told me he was planning to relocate from the South-East to the Welsh countryside.

"The basic things we'll need will be food, water and shelter," he says.

He plans to live off-grid, either joining an existing eco-community or "going it alone" with like-minded friends in a house clad with straw bales for insulation.

"Deep Adaptation isn't a bunker mentality of doing it yourself. You want a mix of people with different skills," he says.

But he also says he has been taking crossbow lessons, "because you never know".

"It seems like a pretty useful weapon to have around to protect ourselves. I'd hate the thought I'd ever have to use it but the thought of standing by and not being able to protect the ones I love is pretty horrifying."

Jem Bendell says Deep Adaptation advocates non-violence. Its online platforms ban members from discussing "fascistic or violent approaches to the situation".

Though it didn't appear in Bendell's first paper he later added a fourth R, Reconciliation, which is all about living in peace. And when I finally get through to him, after two months of unreturned emails and conversations with his colleagues in the Deep Adaptation "core team", he puts a big emphasis on love.

"People are rising up in love in response to their despair and fear," he tells me. "[Deep Adaptation] seems to have reached people in all walks of life, at least in the West - heads of banks, UN agencies, European Commission divisions, political parties, religious leaders..."

His message, he says, is one of "putting love and truth first".

At present, the professor's followers often feel that their truth they believe in is ignored and dismissed by the rest of society.

Lionel says that among people he meets "no-one wants to talk about it".

He's joined several online groups - with names like Near-Term Human Extinction Support Group and Collapse Chronicles - where he can share his despair.

"Sometimes I say that I'm feeling quite low and someone will say they're feeling the same," he tells me. "So you know you're not in it alone."

Rachel tells me that she also sometimes feels isolated. Her attempts to get her neighbours to collaborate in a community compost heap have mostly fallen on deaf ears, so she turns to Deep Adaptation's online forums to find support.

"It's much easier when you have a group to face the tragedy unfolding before us. If I am feeling anxious, hopeless or full of grief I can go on there and tell them how I'm feeling.

"There are 9,000 people all over the world, so you can post on there in the middle of the night and get support. I post ideas about my compost bin and get lots of messages back with people being encouraging."

However, she thinks there will be a day when the electricity is cut off, so she is learning to recite poems by heart, in case she finds herself alone, with no internet or possessions.

"At least I'll have something to carry with me."

All photographs by Jack Hunter, unless otherwise indicated


Professor Jem Bendell – Strategist & educator on social ...
https://jembendell.com
Strategist & educator on social & organisational change, now focused on Deep Adaptation

About – Professor Jem Bendell
https://jembendell.com › about
Dr Jem Bendell is a Professor of Sustainability Leadership and Founder of the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) at the University of Cumbria ...


Responding to Green Positivity Critiques of Deep Adaptation
By Jem Bendell, originally published by Jem Bendell blog
April 15, 2019
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-15/responding-to-green-positivity-critiques-of-deep-adaptation/


Our Actions Create the Future: A Response to Jem Bendell
By Jeremy Lent, originally published by Patterns Of Meaning blog
April 15, 2019
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-15/our-actions-create-the-future-a-response-to-jem-bendell/



Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate ... - Lifeworth
https://www.lifeworth.com › deepadaptation
Jul 27, 2018 - For instance, the first Occasional Paper, by Professor Jem Bendell and Professor. Richard Little, was subsequently published in the Journal of ...

Natural history TV 'boosts species awareness'
By Mark Kinver BBC Environment reporter

Programmes, such as Sir David Attenborough's, triggered a greater interest in species among audiences

Programmes, such as Sir David Attenborough's Planet Earth II series, boost people's awareness and interest in species, a study has suggested.

Despite lacking an overt conservation message, the programmes stimulated people to find out more about the species featured in the broadcasts.

The team from University College Cork based their findings on analysing data from Twitter and Wikipedia.

The findings have been published in Conservation Letters journal.

The researchers said their results appeared to show that "natural history films can provide vicarious connection to nature and can generate durable shifts in audience awareness".
Conservation criticism

Co-author Dario Fernandez-Bellon said that he and co-author Dr Adam Kane decided to carry out the study after the Planet Earth II series attracted some criticism for not carrying a more overt conservation message.

Screen-time, rather than how charismatic an animal was, influenced how an audience behaved

The scientists decided to investigate the initial criticism more closely, using "big data" collated from Twitter and Wikipedia, to see if there was an issue that needed to be highlighted.

"We found that there was, in fact, very little of the script dedicated to conservation," observed Dr Fernandez-Bellon, "and that barely had any impact on Twitter, let alone Wikipedia."

But the researchers found that there was a clear link when it came to the species featured in the programmes.

"What we found was that people's reactions and interest in species was mainly led by how long they were on screen, and independent of whether they were mammals, birds or reptiles," he told BBC News.

In other words, the creatures did not have to be so-called "charismatic species" in order to attract attention.

Dr Fernandez-Bellon added: "It was really quite interesting because it showcases that dilemma producers sometimes have in finding the balance between producing a show that's entertaining, while generating awareness in people without taking a preachy approach."

He observed: "If a producer wants to highlight a specific species that is endangered, they do not really have to rattle on about how endangered it is, but just by giving it more time on screen, people are more likely to go on to Wikipedia and find out the information themselves."

Media professionals recognise that an increasing proportion of the audience now "dual-screen", which describes how they watch television while also using a mobile device, such as a smartphone or a tablet.

Drs Fernandez-Bellon and Kane also decided to see if the data suggested the programmes led to people taking a more proactive approach when it came to conservation, such as donating to a wildlife charity.

"We did look at a couple of charities to see whether they registered peaks in donations around the time Planet Earth II was broadcast," Dr Fernandez-Bellon said.

"The truth is that there was not, not in the same way we had found a peak in Twitter activity, and a peak in Wikipedia activity but there was not in proactive action."

Dr Fernandez-Bellon said that there was a lot of scope to use the big data from social media platforms, such as Twitter, to help shape policies on how to communicate conservation to a wider audience.

"If this data is being used for marketing or business purposes, why couldn't we use it for conservation purposes or to assess potential changes in human behaviour," he said.

Coronavirus: Air pollution and CO2 fall rapidly as virus spreads

By Matt McGrath BBC Environment correspondent 19 March 2020

Traffic has been much-reduced on the streets of New York

Levels of air pollutants arming gases over some cities and regions are showing significant drops as coronavirus impacts work and travel.

Researchers in New York told the BBC their early results showed carbon monoxide mainly from cars had been reduced by nearly 50% compared with last year.

Emissions of the planet-heating gas CO2 have also fallen sharply.

But there are warnings levels could rise rapidly after the pandemic.
A really simple guide to climate change
Climate-related words and phrases explained

With global economic activity ramping down as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, it is hardly surprising that emissions of a variety of gases related to energy and transport would be reduced.

Scientists say that by May, when CO2 emissions are at their peak thanks to the decomposition of leaves, the levels recorded might be the lowest since the financial crisis over a decade ago.

  

Image copyrightNASA

While it is early days, data collected in New York this week suggests that instructions to curb unnecessary travel are having a significant impact.

Traffic levels in the city were estimated to be down 35% compared with a year ago. Emissions of carbon monoxide, mainly due to cars and trucks, have fallen by around 50% for a couple of days this week according to researchers at Columbia University.

They have also found that there was a 5-10% drop in CO2 over New York and a solid drop in methane as well.

"New York has had exceptionally high carbon monoxide numbers for the last year and a half," said Prof Róisín Commane, from Columbia University, who carried out the New York air monitoring work.

"And this is the cleanest I have ever seen it. It's is less than half of what we normally see in 

Although there are a number of caveats to these findings, they echo the environmental impacts connected to the virus outbreaks in China and in Italy.

An analysis carried out for the climate website Carbon Brief suggested there had been a 25% drop in energy use and emissions in China over a two week period. This is likely to lead to an overall fall of about 1% in China's carbon emissions this year, experts believe.

Both China and Northern Italy have also recorded significant falls in nitrogen dioxide, which is related to reduced car journeys and industrial activity. The gas is both a serious air pollutant and a powerful warming chemical.

European Space Agency satellite image showing levels of nitrogen dioxide over Italy

With aviation grinding to a halt and millions of people working from home, a range of emissions across many countries are likely following the same downward path.

While people working from home will likely increase the use of home heating and electricity, the curbing of commuting and the general slowdown in economies will likely have an impact on overall emissions.

"I expect we will have the smallest increase in May to May peak CO2 that we've had in the northern hemisphere since 2009, or even before," said Prof Commane.

This view is echoed by others in the field, who believe that the shutdown will impact CO2 levels for the whole of this year.

"It will depend on how long the pandemic lasts, and how widespread the slowdown is in the economy particularly in the US. But most likely I think we will see something in the global emissions this year," said Prof Corinne Le Quéré from the University of East Anglia.

"If it lasts another three of four months, certainly we could see some reduction."

What's likely to make a major difference to the scale of carbon emissions and air pollution is how governments decide to re-stimulate their economies once the pandemic eases.

Back in the 2008-09, after the global financial crash, carbon emissions shot up by 5% as a result of stimulus spending that boosted fossil fuel use.

In the coming months, governments will have a chance to alter that outcome. They could insist, for instance, that any bailout of airlines would be tied to far more stringent reductions in aviation emissions.

"Governments now have to be really cautious on how they re-stimulate their economies, mindful of not locking in fossil fuels again," said Prof Le Quéré.

"They should focus those things that are ready to go that would lower emissions, like renovating buildings, putting in heat pumps and electric chargers. These are not complicated and can be done straight away, they are just waiting for financial incentives."

However, some argue that if the pandemic goes on a long time, any stimulus would more likely focus on promoting any economic growth regardless of the impact on the environment.

"I certainly think climate could go on the back burner, and in this case, I don't think there is much hope that stimulus goes to clean energy," said Prof Glen Peters from the Centre for International Climate Research.

"Any stimulus will help those with job losses such as tourism and services. I think this is very different to the global financial crisis. The only silver linings could be to learning new practices to work remotely, and buying a few years of lower growth allowing solar and wind to catch up a bit, though, these may be rather small silver linings."

Canada’s mysterious lake monster

For generations, a mythical beast has been said to lurk in the depths of Okanagan Lake. But now a new view on British Columbia’s most revered serpent is taking hold.


By Lisa Kadane BBC 10 March 2020


Not long after I moved to Kelowna, a city in southern British Columbia known for its wineries, water sports and hiking trails, I saw a news story about a monster sighting. Two brothers had seen something undulating across the water in the middle of Okanagan Lake, an 84-mile long lake that curves down the Okanagan Valley past Kelowna in the shape of a serpent. The wave crested and fanned out like a wake, but there wasn’t a boat in sight. They were adamant it was Ogopogo.


Ogopogo is to Kelowna what Nessie is to Loch Ness

You can’t live in Kelowna for any length of time without hearing about its mysterious lake creature. Ogopogo is to Kelowna what Nessie is to Loch Ness: a yet-to-be-identified cryptid that reputedly resides in the lake’s depths and surfaces just often enough to keep the legend alive.



For generations, a mysterious beast has been rumoured to lurk in Okanagan Lake's depths (Credit: Moccasin Trails)

It’s been described as a multi-humped serpentine beast, with green or black skin and the head of a horse, snake or sheep. Drawings depict a coiling sea dragon like what you might see on an old mariner’s map where it says, “Here there be monsters.” Around town, Ogopogo takes on a benign cartoonish form as a 15-foot-long green- and cream-coloured statue on the waterfront, the smiling mascot for the local WHL hockey team and as plush toys at souvenir shops. Like its palindrome name, its physical appearance – and very existence – is something no one can make heads nor tails of.

Ogopogo mania peaked in the 1980s when the region’s tourism association offered a $1m reward for proof of the creature’s existence. Greenpeace came forward and named it an endangered species, demanding that Ogopogo be captured only on film, and not in the flesh. American TV shows of the era, including In Search Of and Unsolved Mysteries, even reported on the Okanagan Valley’s mysterious inhabitant.

A 15-foot-long green- and cream-coloured statue of Ogopogo greets visitors along Kelowna's Waterfront Walk (Credit: Lisa Kadane)

Yet, it wasn’t until I attended the International Indigenous Tourism Conference in Kelowna last autumn that I realised the Ogopogo of Canadian popular culture – a creature that 16% of British Columbians believe in – only came about through miscommunication between Canada’s early European settlers and the Okanagan Valley’s original inhabitants, the Okanagan/syilx.

It’s not really a monster, it’s a spirit of the lake and it protects this valley from one end to the other

“It’s not really a monster, it’s a spirit of the lake and it protects this valley from one end to the other,” said Pat Raphael of the Westbank First Nation, a member nation of the larger Okanagan/syilx Nation Alliance, who guided me through the syilx’s ancestral lands bordering Okanagan Lake. As our bus drove south along the water, she explained that while many in Canada know the creature as Ogopogo, to the syilx, it’s n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ (n-ha-ha-it-koo), which means “the sacred spirit of the lake.” Raphael pointed out the brown hump of Rattlesnake Island across the water, where the spirit is said to dwell. She also had us practice saying n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ in nsyilxcən, the syilx language.

“It’s not Ogopogo! What are you, colonised?” she joked when a few of us struggled with the pronunciation and reverted to saying Ogopogo.

According to the Okanagan Valley’s original inhabitants, the Okanagan/syilx, the spirit of ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ watches over the lake (Credit: laughingmango/Getty Images)



Before European fur traders arrived in the valley in 1809, the syilx had been living in the area for at least 12,000 years. They had their own laws, justice system and beliefs. Chief among them was the importance of water, represented by n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ. It existed in two forms: a spiritual form and a physical, tangible form, which was embodied by the lake itself. Sometimes, though, the spirit would reveal itself from within the lake.

“In our stories, [n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ is] actually very dark in colour and it’s got the head of a horse and the antlers of a deer,” said Coralee Miller, assistant manager at the new Sncəwips Heritage Museum in West Kelowna. “Missionaries saw our water spirit and the habit was to demonise our spiritual beliefs.”

The syilx fed n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ symbolically, with tobacco and sage, and occasionally an offering of Kokanee salmon to thank the lake for providing food and water. “That’s where I think that misunderstanding came from – settlers saw us throw a little bit of meat in the water,” Miller explained.



Many tall tales of Ogopogo spread over the years, and there was once even a $1m reward for proof of the creature’s existence (Credit: Lisa Kadane)

Pioneers were soon telling stories of a serpent in Okanagan Lake that needed a live animal sacrifice to appease it and ensure a safe passage across the water. Once the idea of a bloodthirsty lake serpent took hold, it grew out of control – settlers began patrolling the lake with guns because they were nervous the beast would attack.

But by the 1920s (and likely in the absence of any actual human predation), cooler heads prevailed. Tourism officials named the creature Ogopogo after a catchy English folk song, whose lyrics included: “His mother was an earwig; his father was a whale; a little bit of head; and hardly any tail; and Ogopogo was his name.” N ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ had transformed from a revered spirit into a cartoon-like creature that would lure tourists.

Over time, Ogopogo is what made Kelowna a household name in Canada

It’s hard to know just how many people have travelled to Kelowna over the last century in the hope of seeing the mythical lake monster, but over time, Ogopogo is what made Kelowna a household name in Canada. For years, the creature appeared on Kelowna’s parade float, both in town and at larger parades in the Pacific Northwest and Alberta. Gift shops hawked gimmick jars of Ogopogo’s “eggs” and even its “feces” that would fly off shelves. While the tourism office no longer actively promotes Ogopogo today, the legend remains as popular as ever.

Many Ogopogo sightings have taken place over the William R Bennett Bridge (Credit: Andrew Strain, Destination BC Photography)

Yet, the misappropriation and commodification of n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ is a sensitive issue. To Miller, a member of the Westbank First Nation, n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ and Ogopogo are two separate entities and shouldn’t be conflated. One of the museum’s missions is to tell the story of the area’s Indigenous people, and talk about the importance of n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ in protecting the lake. It’s part of what she calls “de-programming;” questioning or deconstructing the colonial perspective on local history and culture. This is also an important step towards reconciliation, an ongoing, countrywide process of establishing and maintaining respectful relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.

This spring, Indigenous tour company Moccasin Trails is launching paddling tours on Okanagan Lake where guides will discuss n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ as a spiritual talisman – not a physical lake monster – and explain how it became appropriated.

We want people to leave our experiences with a better understanding of Indigenous culture

The canoe journeys begin with a feeding of the water ceremony. As the canoe glides across the lake’s glassy surface, a syilx cultural leader scatters sage and tobacco in the water while summoning the spirit world and telling his ancestors to keep everyone safe. Moccasin Trails co-owner Greg Hopf says the ceremony is powerful, and meant to illustrate the connection Indigenous people have with the earth, which is highly personal.

“It’s kind of what each person interprets the spirit to be,” he said. “We want people to leave our experiences with a better understanding of Indigenous culture.”



Indigenous-led tours will soon take visitors out onto Okanagan Lake to explain the importance of n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ (Credit: Moccasin Trails)

In downtown Kelowna, the Okanagan Heritage Museum works with the Westbank First Nation to tell a more thorough story of the region’s history. It redid its entire gallery in 2019 and represents syilx as a living culture, rather than focusing solely on the people’s way of life pre-colonisation. According to Kelowna Museums’ executive director, Linda Digby, sylix knowledge and perspective is now woven into every era depicted in the museum, and a display on Ogopogo explains how n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ was misunderstood by settlers and grew into a tourism boon.

“To settlers [Ogopogo] was a real thing,” said Digby. “They definitely misinterpreted what they heard from the Indigenous community and had no qualms about making up their own stories and appropriating from them, and it wouldn’t have even occurred to them they were doing that.”

As time wore on, the settlers’ inventory of stories grew – their neighbour saw the creature, or they themselves saw something strange in the lake. “You live here long enough everyone’s going to see something,” Digby said.

The Okanagan Heritage Museum recently redid their displays to tell a more balanced story of the region’s history (Credit: Matt Ferguson, Tourism Kelowna)

During my quest to understand n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ, I encountered a few people who are true believers based on what they’ve seen in Okanagan Lake. And they are far from alone: the museum’s archives are filled with newspaper clippings of Ogopogo sightings over the decades, along with stories about how a lake monster is good for the city’s bottom line.

“Ogopogo is great for tourism. It adds colour and panache and atmosphere,” said Robert Young, a University of British Columbia Okanagan earth sciences professor who is often called on as a voice of reason when an Ogopogo sighting occurs or new “footage” surfaces.

For Young, Ogopogo isn’t a question in biology, it’s a question in earth science processes – the way water moves over the surface of the earth. Thermal stratification in a lake can cause a wave to appear from nowhere when a denser layer of water slides beneath a more buoyant layer, as often happens in the spring or autumn, he explained. He calls it an “Ogopogo wave”.

Some locals are hesitant to want to disprove Ogopogo's existence, saying it's good for tourism (Credit: Meghan Reading, Tourism Kelowna)

This theory offers a plausible explanation for what people might be seeing on the water. But while Young is all for critical thinking about Ogopogo, he’s also loathe to disprove its existence. It should persist, he says, saying that Ogopogo is a Canadian cultural icon, and n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ is an important part of syilx beliefs.

I don’t worry a lake creature will nibble my toes when I go for a dip, but the power of nature gives me pause. I’ve started many days with a morning walk that leads to a ridge ringed by mountains overlooking Okanagan Lake and the rounded hills and extinct volcanoes of the Thompson Plateau behind it. I’m in awe I live in such a stunning place. When the wind ripples the water and sways the ponderosa pine trees growing on the hillside, I feel a connection to the natural beauty of my home. Maybe that spirit of place is my interpretation of n ̓x̌ax̌aitkʷ.


https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CRYPTOZOOLOGY

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Coronavirus: Robots use light beams to zap hospital viruses

By Adrienne Murray
Technology of Business reporter





ADRIENNE MURRAY
The UVD robot takes about 20 minutes to treat a room

"Please leave the room, close the door and start a disinfection," says a voice from the robot.

"It says it in Chinese as well now," Simon Ellison, vice president of UVD Robots, tells me as he demonstrates the machine.

Through a glass window we watch as the self-driving machine navigates a mock-hospital room, where it kills microbes with a zap of ultraviolet light.

"We had been growing the business at quite a high pace - but the coronavirus has kind of rocketed the demand," says chief executive, Per Juul Nielsen.

He says "truckloads" of robots have been shipped to China, in particular Wuhan. Sales elsewhere in Asia, and Europe are also up.

"Italy has been showing a very strong demand," adds Mr Nielsen. "They really are in a desperate situation. Of course, we want to help them."
ADRIENNE MURRAY
Powerful UV light is already a proven means to kill microbes

Production capacity has tripled, and the team now assembles one disinfection robot a day at their facility in Odense, Denmark's third largest city - and home to a growing robotics hub.

Glowing like light sabres, eight bulbs emit concentrated UV-C ultraviolet light. This destroys bacteria, viruses and other harmful microbes by damaging their DNA and RNA, so they can't multiply.

It's also hazardous to humans, so we wait outside. The job is done in 10-20 minutes. Afterwards there's a smell, much like burned hair.

"There are a lot of problematic organisms that give rise to infections," explains Prof Hans Jørn Kolmos, a professor of clinical microbiology, at the University of Southern Denmark, which helped develop the robot.

"If you apply a proper dose of ultraviolet light in a proper period of time, then you can be pretty sure that you get rid of your organism."

He adds: "This type of disinfection can also be applied to epidemic situations, like the one we experience right now, with coronavirus disease."
ADRIENNE MURRAY
UVD has tripled output of its disinfecting robots

The robot was launched in early 2019, following six years of collaboration between parent firm, Blue Ocean Robotics and Odense University Hospital where Prof Kolmos has overseen infection control.

Costing $67,000 (£53,370) each, the robot was designed to reduce the likelihood of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) which can be costly to treat and cause loss of life.

While there's been no specific testing to prove the robot's effectiveness against coronavirus, Mr Nielsen is confident it works

Dr Lena Ciric, an associate professor at University College London and expert on molecular biology, agrees that UV disinfection robots can help fight coronavirus.

"Coronavirus is very similar to other viruses like Mers and Sars. And we know that they are being killed by UV-C light," he says.

Disinfection robots are no "silver bullet", says Dr Ciric. But she adds: "These [machines] provide an extra line of defence."

"We're in the run up to having a lot of coronavirus patients in the various hospitals. I think it's wise to be on top of the cleaning regimes… from an infection control point of view. "

To be fully effective, UV needs to fall directly on a surface. If lightwaves are blocked by dirt or obstacles, such shadow areas won't be disinfected. Therefore manual cleaning is needed first.

UV light has been used for decades in water and air purification, and used in laboratories.

But combining them with autonomous robots is a recent development.
Image copyright XENEX
Xenex also has a device which uses UV light

American firm Xenex has LightStrike, which has to be manually put in place, and delivers high-intensity UV light from a U-shaped bulb.

The company has seen a surge in orders from Italy, Japan, Thailand and South Korea.

Xenex says numerous studies show that it's effective at reducing hospital-acquired infections and combating so-called superbugs. In 2014, one Texan hospital used it in the clean-up after an Ebola case.

More than 500 healthcare facilities, mostly in the US, have the machine. In California and Nebraska, it has already been put to use sanitising hospital rooms where coronavirus patients received treatment, the manufacturer says.

In China, where the outbreak began, there has been an adoption of new technology to help fight the disease.

The nation is already the highest spender on drones and robotics systems, according to a report from global research firm IDC.

Leon Xiao, Senior Research Manager at IDC China says robots have been used for a range of tasks, primarily disinfection, deliveries of drugs, medical devices and waste removal, and temperature-checking.

'I think this is a breakthrough for greater use of robotics both for hospitals and other public places," says Mr Xiao. However space in hospitals to deploy robots and acceptance by staff are challenges, he says.

Image copyright YOUIBOT
YouiBot has quickly developed its own disinfecting robot

The coronavirus has spurred home-grown Chinese robotics companies to innovate.

Shenzhen-based YouiBot was already making autonomous robots, and quickly adapted its technology to make a disinfection device.

"We're trying to do something [to help], like every one here in China," says YouiBot's Keyman Guan.

The startup adapted its existing robotic base and software, adding thermal cameras and UV-C emitting bulbs.

"For us technically, [it's] not as difficult as you imagine… actually it's just like Lego," says Mr Guan.

Image copyright YOUIBOT
YouiBot at a hospital in Wuhan

It has supplied factories, offices and an airport, and a hospital in Wuhan. "It's running right now in the luggage hall… checking body temperature in the day, and it goes virus killing during the night," he says. However the robot's efficacy hasn't yet been evaluated.

Meanwhile plant closures and other restrictions to curb coronavirus, have hampered getting parts. "The lack of one single component, [and] we cannot build a thing," adds Mr Guan, though he notes things have improved in the last couple of weeks.

"There are not many good things to say about epidemics," says Professor Kolmus, but it has forced industry "to find new solutions".

Vampire bats 'French kiss with blood' to form lasting bonds

GETTY IMAGES

Vampire bats are actually rather friendly - to each other at least

Vampire bats establish friendships by sharing regurgitated blood with their neighbours in a "kind of horrifying French kiss", a new study says.

Researchers observing the mammals said their sharing behaviours appeared to be an important aspect of their bonding.

If bats go three days without eating, they can die of starvation, so sharing the blood can be a life-saving act.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, aimed to determine how the species developed relationships.

It found that when the vampire bats became isolated in a roost, pairs unfamiliar with one another - but in close proximity - would begin grooming, then "mouth-licking" before swapping food.

Secrets of how vampire bats became bloodthirsty
Five things you might not know about bats

"We go from bats starting as strangers from different colonies to groupmates that act to save each other's life," said Prof Gerald Carter, author of the study and behavioural ecologist at Ohio State University.

"They have this 'boom and bust' foraging experience, so they either hit it big and get a large blood meal or they're starved for that night.

"Food sharing in vampire bats is like how a lot of birds regurgitate food for their offspring. But what's special with vampire bats is they do this for other adults," Prof Carter said.

He added that the bats would groom even after their fur had been cleansed, suggesting that the behaviour was not just an issue of maintaining hygiene.

Vampire bats are the only mammals to feed entirely on blood, which they get by biting larger animals such as cattle.

The flying creatures can drink up to half their weight in blood a day, unlike their other bat relatives, which generally dine on fruit, nectar or insects.

In November, a scientific study discovered that bats that form bonds while in captivity often continue their relationships when released back into the wild

Around the world from your sofa: British Library to put rare globes online

Examples include 1679 pocket globe and 1730 terrestrial globe showing California as an island

Digitally recording a globe at the British Library. Photograph: The British Library


Mark Brown Arts correspondent  Published on Wed 18 Mar 2020

What better way to see the world in these travel-restricted times than from the comfort of your sofa? The British Library is this month putting on a digital display of some of its more hidden treasures, including historic globes which will be available to explore online.

The library has about 150 historic globes in its vast collection of books, manuscripts and maps. Most are so delicate they are rarely seen by visitors.

On 26 March the library will launch the first fruits of an ambitious two-year project to digitise the globes, allowing people to see them in incredible close-up detail.

“Everyone loves an old globe, don’t they,” said Tom Harper, the lead curator of antiquarian maps at the library. “When you see one you want to spin it.

“They seem really visible, accessible things … but actually original globes are really quite elusive and even mysterious. Because they were built as tactile objects original ones are really rare and often in a terrible state.

“The globes we’ve got here we have to be very protective of them. We can’t bring them out for readers to look at because they are so fragile so they are the hidden world maps and hidden star charts of the collection.”

The process allows people to see close-up detail of the globes online. 

Photograph: The British Library

Seven globes will go online initially, including what is possibly the earliest miniature pocket globe, made by Joseph Moxon in 1679, which would have been seen as a gentlemanly status symbol.


Other globes will include Richard Cushee’s 1730 terrestrial globe which has California as an island and the northwest of north America labelled “unknown parts”.

Harper said globes were able to tell fascinating stories about the history of discoveries. “Globes are brilliant for that. You get a sense in the 18th century, before and after Cook, of this incredible excitement about exploration, what latest things were being found all over the world.

“You can appreciate it more when you are looking at a globe, you get a physical sense of it being completely on the other side of the world which you don’t get when you look at a map.”

There will also be original celestial globes going on the website, including one from 1606 made by the Dutchman Willem Janszoon Blaeu.

These globes, which show the stars, would often have been paired with terrestrial globes, to be seen together as a 3D model of the universe.

“It was quite a profound, conceptual thing to do when you think about it,” said Harper.

“People haven’t really given enough time to them in the past, they are quite complicated things to understand.

“It is with the celestial globes that you really get so much more of the culture of the age, of the people who were looking at and making the globes.”

Library staff have worked with the digitising company Cyreal on the project for two years. Some of the globes have been photographed as many as 1,200 times to capture every aspect of their surface area. “The technology now is so much more accessible than it was five years ago.”

The globes will be available on the British Library website. There will also be an augmented reality version of the globes, available via the Sketchfab app.

Harper said there was still much to learn from historic globes and he hopes the public will help.

“We want to find out things about these globes that we haven’t noticed before. It’s not just features or places on the globe which we haven’t noticed, they have been well studied, it’s more how these features are shown, and what that tells us about the people who were looking at them. It is more the contextual history we are interested in.”

DOWN AND OUT IN LA

'If I get it, I die': homeless residents say inhumane shelter conditions will spread coronavirus

As California officials urge residents to avoid physical contact, residents worry the facilities are not prepared to cope with the outbreak

Sam Levin in Los Angeles Thu 19 Mar 2020 THE GUARDIAN
 

A homeless man huddles under a blanket in Los Angeles. 

Photograph: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Southern California homeless shelter residents say long-running unsanitary and inhumane conditions now put them at severe risk of death amid the rapid spread of the coronavirus.

As California officials this week urged millions of residents to stay inside and avoid physical contact to slow the spread of Covid-19, people living in several overcrowded homeless shelters in Orange county say they continue to sleep in rows of beds within a few feet of each other, and that they often lack basic hygiene supplies and amenities.

The residents report a variety of serious problems, including empty soap dispensers, a lack of toilet paper, no hot water, broken sinks, no working thermometers, blood-stained walls and infrequent cleaning. They worry the shelters are ill-prepared to cope once the spread of the virus intensifies in the US.

“It’s appalling. One person gets a cough and everyone gets it,” said Wendy Powitzky, 49, who has been living at the La Mesa shelter in Anaheim in southern California for months. “We’ve already been passing around a standard cold.”

Some days, the soap containers in the bathroom go empty: “Most people don’t have their own. So I guess everyone else is just washing their hands with water.”

California has the largest homeless population in the US, with more than 40,000 people living in shelters on a given night. Advocates and shelter residents have warned for years that many of the facilities are underregulated and underfunded, and that conditions in some may pose significant health hazards. Amid the coronavirus crisis, they fear, those circumstances could make the spread of the virus in shelters near-inevitable.
Homeless tents line the street in downtown Los Angeles. 

Photograph: Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images


A significant number of shelter residents are older and already live with serious health problems. The ongoing problems with sanitation and accommodations in some of the shelters make it largely impossible for many residents to comply with Covid-19 precautionary measures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control, according to Eve Garrow, the homelessness policy analyst with the ACLU of Southern California.

What’s more, some in shelters have been waiting for years for more permanent housing due to a severe shortage of affordable homes for low-income renters. If residents leave now, they could lose their spot and also face police harassment if they sleep outside. Despite these risks, some are fleeing the facilities to avoid the virus and returning to encampments, even as officials urge people to seek shelter.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” said Garrow, who spent more than a year investigating conditions in local shelters for a 2019 report documenting the unsafe and toxic environments. “If coronavirus impacts people in shelters, it’s going to spread like wildfire.”
Risk death inside or arrest outside: ‘Where do we go?’

Homeless organizations have been sounding the alarm for weeks, warning that the coronavirus could cause catastrophic harm to unhoused communities amid the absence of a coordinated strategy to aid people already struggling to survive in tents and overcrowded shelters. Officials in Los Angeles moved on Tuesday to temporarily stop some of the sweeps of encampments due to coronavirus.


Residents in four homeless facilities in Orange county, the region Garrow studied, shared with the Guardian photos and accounts of long-running problems that have sparked new fears amid the corona crisis. 

The Courtyard shelter in Santa Ana, California. 

Photograph: ACLU of Southern California

“If I start coughing, they may throw me out and I will have no place to go,” said one homeless man in his 70s, currently living at The Courtyard, a Santa Ana shelter where the ACLU last year found “squalid conditions”. The resident, who has spent years at the facility, asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the shelter. He has serious health problems and worries coronavirus would kill him: “If I catch it and die, this miserable life will be over for me.”

His shelter, a former bus terminal that houses more than 400 people in cots, has multiple broken sinks and dysfunctional soap dispensers, he said: “We have to supply our own soap, and then we have to wait in line to get a sink that works.”

Joseph Grubb, a 53 year old who has been staying at a Salvation Army shelter in Anaheim for months, said one men’s bathroom has blood on the walls and the other one has no soap: “The coronavirus is going around like crazy and they are not even cleaning the bathrooms up … You have to go into the bloody one to wash your hands. I try not to touch the door and kick it open.”

With coronavirus concerns and the conditions not improving, Grubb said he decided to leave the Salvation Army, even though he has nowhere else to go. He said he was worried about the older residents remaining: “If the virus does hit there, they are gone.”
Homeless camp along the Los Angeles river. 

Anti-homeless laws in some cities force people into shelters. 

Photograph: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Because the city of Anaheim also has a number of anti-homeless laws meant to prevent sleeping outside and force people in shelters, Grubb said he is now sleeping in a tent, living in fear police will cite or jail him: “Every night, we don’t know if we’re going to get arrested for being where we’re at, or harassed.” But it was preferable to the shelter, he added.

Callie Rutter, 56, recently lived in the Bridges at Kraemer Place shelter in Anaheim and is now in a care program fighting lung cancer. She predicts the coronavirus would spread at the shelter just like the notorious “Kraemer cough” had done in the past. “It’s a mass shelter in the middle of winter. But, even if it was summer, it wouldn’t make a difference.”

Powitzky lived in the La Mesa shelter, where she slept in a dorm-like cubicle with three other women within a few feet of her.

Powitzky said she left the La Mesa shelter this week over coronavirus fears and was told she would lose her spot. She said there have been basic plumbing problems at the shelter with shower water not draining properly, creating further risks of spreading diseases. When she reported her recent potential fever, staff said they didn’t have a functioning thermometer to take her temperature and ended up sending her to the hospital, where she discovered she was sick, but not with coronavirus.

Powitzky said she has repeatedly complained about unsanitary conditions and the response was, in effect, “If you don’t like it you can leave.”

“But where are we going to go?” she asked. “We can’t be in the streets.”
The dangers of mass shelter quarantines

There is no single state entity with oversight over safety in shelters, which are run by a patchwork of not-for-profits and local municipalities and have often lacked the training and resources needed to support a surging homeless population with complex needs. Solving longstanding structural problems during an unprecedented health crisis is a huge challenge for the organizations, but advocates have urged government agencies to have a unified strategy to prioritize resources and supports for this population, given that they are the most vulnerable.

Mike Lyster, a spokesman for the city of Anaheim, which oversees the Salvation Army shelter, did not respond to specific questions about the bathrooms, saying in an email that the shelter has a “high standard of facilities”. He added: “There always can also be an isolated issue, but bathrooms are regularly cleaned and addressed.”

Paul Leon, CEO of the Illumination Foundation, which runs La Mesa, said the shelter recently had a problem with a thermometer but that it was now monitoring all residents’ temperatures multiple times a day. He said the shelter has no soap shortage, though there may have been an “isolated incident”, adding that the facility has recently stocked up on sanitizer and other supplies.

Leon said the shelter was trying to be strict about when people enter and exit to minimize possible Covid-19 transmission: “The shelters could be the safest place for them.” He said the situation was “under control”, but added, “Next week, we’ll see how bad it gets.”

At the Bridges shelter, staff are doing widespread screening for possible symptoms and are prepared to isolate people as needed, said Larry Haynes, director of the not-for-profit that runs the facility.

Some shelters are now preparing for lockdowns and quarantines if outbreaks occur. While those restrictions could help to stop the spread of the virus to the outside world, some advocates warned that they could put the most vulnerable people in the shelters at greater risk to catch the virus  

A homeless man sits in the morning sun in 

downtown Los Angeles in front of city hall. 

Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

“If anyone comes down with it, we’re going to get locked down,” said Joshua Ogle, a 41-year-old La Mesa resident who has lived in multiple Orange county shelters, adding that he feared for his friends who were seniors and how residents’ mental health might suffer under quarantine. “People are going to really lose their minds.”

Garrow said she feared quarantines would do nothing to fix conditions that promote contagions. In a letter to state officials on Monday, she instead called for health and sanitation standards and social distancing practices to be adopted and enforced at shelters, for the state to bring hygiene supplies and coronavirus testing and treatment to the facilities and for officials to provide housing vouchers so people can self-isolate.

Meanwhile, California’s governor said he was working to make hotels and trailers available to homeless people to get them inside and prevent mass outbreaks, and LA’s mayor said he would make 6,000 beds available at city recreation centers.


A spokesperson for Orange county, which oversees several shelters, including The Courtyard, did not answer specific questions but said the county was evaluating federal and state guidelines and resources to figure out solutions for homeless people: “This may include creating appropriate spaces for isolation such as temporary structures, tents and trailers, and or motels and hotels as available.”

Davon Brown, a resident who lives at an LA park encampment, said he felt safer being able to isolate in a tent and would not consider a shelter: “If you want more people to die, you put them in a shelter.”

One Salvation Army resident in his 60s, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, said he should not have been in this predicament in the first place. He has been in the shelter for over two years, waiting for housing. He thought by now he’d have his own roof over his head and be safe: “It just hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to.” And now he faces a high risk of serious illness or worse, he said: “If I get this, I could die.”