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‘We’re just trying to stay afloat’
Two months into lockdown, Santa Barbara’s businesses struggle to survive
SB Supes to vote on RISE Guide By JOSH GREGA NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
By CHRISTIAN WHITTLE NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
The COVID-19 crisis has turned life upside down for Santa Barbara, with the closure of nonessential businesses, strict social distancing guidelines, and stay-at-home orders throwing almost everyone’s plans for 2020 out the window. Experiences and responses from business owners have varied, with some struggling to make ends meet by adapting and others forced to completely close. While each story is unique, across the board it’s been a dire two months. When state and local officials called for the closure of all bars, nightclubs, pubs, wineries and breweries on March 17, the California Department of Public Health urged restaurants offering on-site dining to transition to only offering delivery and take-out service. Many in Santa Barbara have attempted to do just that in order to avoid closing down entirely. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I knew and felt in the back of my mind that unfortunately the government and the financial institutions don’t have my best interest in their minds, so I definitely made the decision not to close,” said Ruben Perez, whose family owns Black Sheep Restaurant at 26 E. Ortega
“I was late with rent in April, then I was able to get a PPP loan, and that was able to free me up,” said Don Parsons, owner of Twin Lakes Golf in Goleta.
RAFAEL MALDONADO / NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS
“We’re just trying to hold on until we open back up,” said Ruben Perez, owner and manager of Black Sheep restaurant on Ortega Street.
St. “It takes money to be able to close in security and comfort and unfortunately that, for small businesses, isn’t the case. Even still at this point I haven’t gotten or received any of the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) or anything like that, so we decided that it’s better and in our best interest if we just stay open.” By offering to-go and delivery, Black Sheep, which just celebrated its sixth anniversary, has been able to keep 10 of its small 16-person staff employed throughout the coronavirus crisis. It wasn’t a simple transition. The restaurant’s menu is designed with an intimate dining experience in mind, so Mr. Perez and his father, Black Sheep’s chef, had to design their dishes for transportation. “We’ve definitely had to modify our menu to just be a little more
sustainable in terms of food that’s going to hold a little bit longer to make sure it still has the same representation when it gets there,” said Mr. Perez. Of course, the business models for a full-service restaurants and to-go only operations are much different, and while the community has been supportive, Black Sheep is still struggling to pay the bills. “We’re just trying to hold on until we open back up. We’re not making money. We’re just trying to stay afloat,” said Mr. Perez. Other restaurants, like Mitchell Sjerven’s bouchon, are unable to transition to a viable to-go model, as their food and fine dining experience does not translate to a take-out or delivery service. Mr. Sjerven felt that it would be better to shut down immediately rather than bring in a miniscule Please see lockdown on A8
“Our industry has really taken it hard,” said Tom Patton, general manager of Ramada by Wyndham Santa Barbara.
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors will discuss Tuesday whether to adopt its newly released Reopening in Safe Environment guide The RISE guide, a document designed to serve as a more localized companion piece to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s fourstage Resilience Roadmap for economic recovery is described by county spokeswoman Gina DePinto as a “living document.” The guide is expected to change over time as it receives additional input from local industry sectors and as the pandemic conditions change. Led by Santa Barbara County Public Health Officer Dr. Henning Ansorg, the creation of the guidelines set forth within the guide involved an expert panel of epidemiologists, physicians, and public health experts as well as more than 350 individuals from local industries, faith organizations, and educational institutions. Board of Supervisors Chair and 2nd District Supervisor Gregg Hart spoke highly of the collaboration that went into the document, calling it a “great example of our community’s ability to work together.” He added, “I’m hopeful that the collaboration that led to creating this document will help the board of supervisors and the County Public Health Department as we move forward in opening more businesses in our county.” According to a press release, the RISE document will guide local officials’ decision making in restarting Santa Barbara County’s economy if the state permits the county greater policy making discretion. The “Recommendations” section of the RISE Guide suggests advocating for a change in the state criteria that determine when localities can ease restrictions and progress onto the next phase of Stage 2 reopening. The stringency of current state standards, it says, doesn’t holistically take into Please see RISE on A3
A new kind of mission Dos Pueblos grad helps NASA design ventilators in response to COVID-19 pandemic By MITCHELL WHITE NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
It took officials with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory just 37 days to create a life-saving solution. As concerns due to the novel coronavirus began to escalate throughout the country in March, the group of engineers who make their living exploring potential life on Jupiter or Mars combined their smarts and talents with their readily available equipment as they aimed at saving lives back home — creating a ventilator that can be used on critically ill COVID patients. The Vital Intervention Technology Accessible Locally, or VITAL for short, project included 175 lab employees. Due to the work-at-home directives in place, some 20 employees worked tirelessly while physically inside the Pasadena lab, including Goleta native and Dos Pueblos High School graduate Shaunessy Grant. Ms. Grant, a hardware quality assurance engineer at JPL, is responsible for hardware and workmanship inspections, as
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well as configuration control, documentation, risk mitigation, supplier sourcing and general spacecraft assembly. On the VITAL project, she was the lead quality assurance engineer on the floor. She worked to understand the Federal Drug Administration requirements and determine what documentation would be needed to garner approval for the ventilator while the prototypes were being built. The design was recently approved by the FDA via an emergency use authorization. “We specialize in spacecraft, not medical-device manufacturing,” said JPL Director Michael Watkins. “But excellent engineering, rigorous testing and rapid prototyping are some of our specialties. When people at JPL realized they might have what it takes to support the medical community and the broader community, they felt it was their duty to share their ingenuity, expertise and drive.” She also worked on the assembly line, inspecting various parts and overseeing workmanship to final testing
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and shipping. She also helped establish a manufacturing process to streamline assembly of the device. Last month, JPL delivered a prototype of the device to the Human Simulation Lab in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York for additional testing. The tests were successful, as the prototype performed as expected under a variety of simulated patient conditions. The team is confident the VITAL ventilator will be able to assist patients suffering from COVID-19 in the U.S. and throughout the world, said Dr. Matthew Levin, director of innovation for the Human Simulation Lab and associate professor of anesthesiology, preoperative and pain medicine, and genetics and genomics sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine. The ventilator can be built faster and can be maintained easier than a traditional ventilator in that it consists of fewer parts that are currently available through existing supply chains.
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The device can also be modified for use in field hospitals being set up in convention centers, hotels or other facilities around the world. The device requires patients to be sedated and an oxygen tube to be inserted into their airway. While typical ventilators can last years and can address a myriad of medical issues, the VITAL device is intended to last three or four months and is specifically tailored to coronavirus patients, according to officials. “Intensive care units are seeing COVID-19 patients who require highly dynamic ventilators,” said Dr. J.D. Polk, NASA’s chief health and medical officer. “The intention with VITAL is to decrease the likelihood patients will get to that advanced stage of the disease and require more advanced ventilator assistance.” NASA recently featured the device in a post on its website, which included a video sharing insight from various engineers on the time and energy put into the project, as well as reasoning behind their work. Please see ventilators on A3
COURTESY PHOTO
Dos Pueblos High School graduate Shaunessy Grant helps package a ventilator designed by her team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aimed at treating critically ill coronavirus patients.
LOTTERY RESULTS Saturday’s SUPER LOTTO: 3-9-23-27-35 Meganumber: 16 Friday’s MEGA MILLIONS: 11-17-32-33-46 Meganumber: 25 Friday’s DAILY DERBY: 02-11-01 TIME: 1:48.75 Saturday’s Daily 3: 8-3-1 / Evening: 3-8-9
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