Eureka Springs has a population of about 2,000 year-round residents and a city hospital with fewer than 20 beds. Many of the surrounding counties within a two-hour drive have a similarly lopsided ratio of residents to hospital beds.
We don’t know how many of our neighbors within that radius have the corona virus because the government has not yet figured out how to test them. Judging by the number of deaths reported nationally, the virus is spreading exponentially, even though the real number of deaths is unknown and generally underreported.
Beefed-up testing combined with the rapid spread of the virus due to prematurely phasing out various quarantine strategies seem certain to produce some alarmingly large numbers in the coming weeks. This could result in a lot of people who should be hospitalized. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of those victims will have little chance of survival.
As hospitals overflow with patients who are treatable, what will be done with the terminal cases? Judging by the pressure and protests aimed at reopening bars and restaurants, more people seem concerned about the economy than the health of the nation. As any fan of MASH knows, triage involves deciding which people have no future. Where do we put them while they wait to die?
Hometown or home office?
Remember Dutch Elm disease? Did it destroy every tree and bush growing throughout the Ozarks? No, and why not? Because elm trees were not the only species growing here.
Nature favors diversity and abhors monocultural environments because they are too risky. If you find yourself in Las Vegas at a roulette table and you win your first bet by placing a chip on Red 12, what will probably happen if you place your whole pile on Red 12 the next time the wheel spins? Right. Odds are you’ll lose your shirt.
Eureka’s economy has placed all its bets on tourism ever since Gerald L.K. Smith showed us the way and those who profited from it spun the big lie: “Eureka is a tourist town.”
This self-serving philosophy ignores a number of facts. For a lot of people who live here, Eureka Springs is their hometown. It’s where many participate in a creative community while raising families and growing old with life-long friends. Many residents do not depend on tourism for a living. Some brought wealth with them, some live on mailbox money from Social Security or investments, some work elsewhere in the Northwest Arkansas corridor, some have mastered being hippiebilly poor and an ever-increasing number work from home via the internet.
Nonetheless, for half a century Eureka has governed itself in such a way as to promote the growth of the tourist industry at the expense of maintaining Eureka and making it a worthwhile place for all to live in. Having spent millions of tax dollars to promote and advertise Eureka to tourists for decades, we find ourselves with a peculiar physical infrastructure which may help motels and hotels “make a killing” as gift shops wither and restaurants struggle.
The metric that expresses the capacity of a hospital is the same as the metric that defines the capacity of a tourist destination. Beds. While Eureka’s hospital has fewer than 20 beds, Eureka’s lodgings total somewhere around 1,000.
We only recently discovered that 20 years ago Fort Smith designated Eureka as the destination for about 750 of its residents if an emergency demanded the city be evacuated. As today’s virus spreads and local hospitals are overrun, how many city, state and federal officials are looking at Eureka’s 1,000 beds with an eye toward using them to house terminal coronavirus victims who would no longer need the elaborate technical assistance available to those hospitalized with a chance to recover?
The federal government pays some private contractors about $750 a night to let each ICE detainee sleep on the floor of a cage. In Eureka, with two terminal virus victims to a room, that would run to about $1.5 million a night.
Maybe Eureka Springs will become Arkansas’ extraordinary escape. Perfect for a last vacation.
This is a one industry town. A cut rate industry built on the backs of low income employees. We don’t offer anything that anyone needs. We don’t even offer safe sidewalks, quiet streets or adequate parking for ourselves or our visitors. We cater to noisy, inconsiderate visitors by not enforcing noise ordinances which makes a quiet walking tour or live performances, even indoors, impossible to enjoy. I used to think I would spend my old age sitting in Basin Spring Park watching the world go by but I’d probably just get into a fistfight with some inconsiderate drunk on a Harley. We seem to have given up on being a town to become nothing more than a tourist trap.