Small towns across the Sierra fear tourists will bring coronavirus with them
The Sierra Nevada towns that dot Alpine County, Calif., have no hospital. Nor do they have a single doctor's office or clinic.
In this region of small unincorporated towns, the workers who comprise its fellowship of coronavirus first responders look a bit different from their counterparts in metropolises a few hours away. They're a mix of civic-minded locals serving as volunteer firefighters and EMTs, and ambulance contractors who come when called from neighboring counties.
Until the coronavirus outbreak, a nurse practitioner ran the county's only health care facility, but she recently left to help in an Army clinic in Texas. Now, residents must go out of the county, in some cases across the state line to Nevada, for health care, or call 911.
That's why health and law officials in the least populous county in California - and other nearby rural counties that draw anglers, backpackers and skiers - have
