ATSSA Signal July/August 2020

The Signal | July/August 2020 11 COVID-19 After that, he was called up through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact to help in New York City—the nation’shotspotfornovelcoronaviruscases. InApril andMay, Scrivani serveda30-day deployment in Brooklyn, helping set up and run a temporarymorgue tomanage the flow of bodies being collected from hospitals across the various boroughs of New York City. As overwhelmed hospitals made head- lines in New York, Scrivani worked to solve the problem that would follow: the need for temporary storage of bodies as the cemeteries and crematories became overwhelmedwith a death toll theywere not built to handle. NewYork typically sees about 150deaths fromall causesperday.WhenScrivaniwas interviewed in earlyMay, the citywas still seeing around 400 a day and it was hard to tell when those numbersmight return to normal. John Scrivani, who works for the Virginia Department of Transportation, took his own RV to live in while deployed to New York City to help with morgue operations in Brooklyn amid the height of devastation from the novel coronavirus. 3M worked with Ford to develop a new design for a powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) for health care professionals that provides a supply of filtered air for up to eight hours on a single battery charge. 3M also produced other medical supplies to help the sick and health care personnel. “It’s reallyhard to just thrownumbers ona pieceof paper and say, ‘Wewill bedoneat somepoint,’” hesaid. “It’samoving target.” Scrivani spent most of his career in New York. He spent 20 yearswith theNewYork PoliceDepartment andwas on the scene after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in2001. Healsoworked for thecity’sOfficeofChief Medical Examiner andwas calledback to the city in 2012 to help with the recovery fromHurricane Sandy. He said thepandemic responsewasmark- edlydifferentfromthefeelofpastdisasters. “Normally, whenyoucomeupon the scene of adisaster, it is somewhat localized. You cansee thevisual devastation, youcansee what the problem is and fix it,” Scrivani said. “With a pandemic, everything looks the same as you move around until you roll up on a hospital and you see a lot of people, a lot of lines.”  To reach Emily Freehling, communications@atssa.com.