STAFF: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Cynthia Smith, the deputy director of OCPA Media Relations Division. Today I will be facilitating this press conference with Lieutenant General Semonite from the head of the Corps of Army Engineers. He has a mission update to present to you.
Sir?
LIEUTENANT GENERAL TODD T. SEMONITE: Thanks so much.
Well, thanks for -- for being here. I think this is about the fourth time I've done this, and I'll just give you a very, very quick couple of minute overview of what we're doing. But then I really want to give you some updates of what we've actually seen and what we continue to do.
Before I get into operational updates, I think in the last -- this is day 35 for us, and in the last 35 days I've been in New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Miami -- last time I did this I was actually in Miami -- and I just got back from Denver, and going to New Jersey, I think next week. And what I am amazed at is the dedication of all these great heroes that continue to step up. And while I have not necessarily been in the middle of an ICU that's active, we still see an awful lot of nurses and doctors.
But really, it's the rest of the entire federal team working side by side with state and local people from FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency], from HHS [Health and Human Services], all of the governors' offices, the mayor's office and just the -- the construction side. I'll talk a little bit about our contractors as well today -- just the dedication, the loyalty, and the commitment they have.
And I'll just start out by saying that there's an awful lot of times where we might be building a barracks for the 82nd Airborne down at Fort Bragg, and that's important things to do. But I can't think of a nobler -- a more noble calling right now for an engineer to be able to build a facility, to be able to help take some of this stress off of -- off of this -- these -- these hospital shortages. And -- and we're very honored to be able to do this, and -- and honored to be able to continue to keep you up to speed on where we're at on it.
Two other points. First of all, now, I asked our guys -- we started this 35 days ago. They said, "What's the most important thing?" and we thought building beds was most important. Number one is protect the force. You probably saw me come out with a mask. Every single day we have an operational update, and I tell our team, "No matter what you're doing and no matter how important putting beds on the ground are, what's most important is that we continue to take care of our entire team and -- and -- and our -- " and I'm talking about our contractors and everybody who's with me.
Just a couple things that we're doing, and we might not have been doing this three or four weeks ago, but we've all gotten a lot smarter of how to be able to make sure -- and while I -- our doctors and our nurses and -- and our emergency responders are absolutely very, very important, we've got to be out on the ground. We can't, you know, self-isolate and get a hospital built. So that if we had our contractors come down and get infected, then we're going to have a -- a lot of ramifications with getting it in.
So it's very, very important to us to be able to make sure that, first of all, our Corps of Engineer employees, we check them all. We've got temperature guns. When I go get on a plane to fly somewhere, my -- my -- I have a carry -- a microbiologist with me. He pulls out the gun and he shoots the pilots to check their temperature. The pilots turn around and then they take my temperature, and we're all testing each other. To get in the Pentagon now you've got to have the mask on. When we go into FEMA headquarters we're taking everybody's temperature. And we're just trying to make that we're doing every single thing possible to be able to make sure we're protecting the force.
The other day when we were in Denver and actually walked in with the mayor of Denver, and we took a -- took the team in, every -- everybody had to go through a screening booth, and they asked you, "Have you been outside of the country? Have you been in any of these other places? Have you been around someone affected?" About six or seven different questions, and then they went ahead and they took our temperature. And then I normally run a little bit low, and so that my -- my temperature was great. And then they immediately took a red dot and they put it on the side of my hardhat. And that day, everybody was driving around -- or everybody had red dots. The next day was a different color.
I went to another place in Denver where we were doing a center, and there it was an armband to be able to put on just to make sure that everybody was valid and everybody was protected. And I, kind of, said, "Out of a hundred people who come in, how many do you actually see that have some degree of issues?" I think he had seen one that morning that was a little bit high, and he immediately turns him around and says, "You can't report in here."
So it's important that we all do this. We aren't sure how long this is going to be with us, but for those of us that are out there working, it's absolutely incumbent that we continue to take care of our team.
And I want to brag a little bit about my Corps of Engineers team as well. We've got 36,000 employees in the Corps of Engineers, very, very few people know but 99.5 percent of those are civilians. And these are Army civilians that have been with us 30, 40, 50 years, they've been doing this since they're 19 or 20 or 21.
And I was just out with one of our teams and saw them absolutely committed, 18, 19 hours a day. We've actually got some of them that are almost living at the job site. And to be able to have these contracts, and these contracts administered, our guys are walking around with red shirts and white hard hats on and there's no way we could do it without it.
And so they're very, very focused. I use the word "noble," very, very noble to be able to step up there. But it's not only the Corps team, it's our contractor work base as well. And we continue to see great performance on all of them.
So let me give you a couple operational updates, and we'll go to the first slides. And these slides are all posted. This is actually the infographic, and the website is on the bottom of here. If you just go search "Corps of Engineers, COVID [Coronavirus Disease]," you'll be able to pull this up.
And we've tried to make some relatively simple updates here, on where we're at. I'm going to give you a couple other more specifics, but this is there any day you want, we change this every morning so you'll have a chance to kind of get some numbers.
Let's go to the next chart real quick. This is hard to read from there, but that's why I'm going to give you a little bit simpler version. But I just want you to know that we're going to put on our website, every single day, what are those awards.
And if you look at the far green box over at the right, right now, we are building 28 alternative care facilities with about 15,800 different bed spaces. When I talked to you about 10 days ago, on the 8th, the number was 17. So in the last 10 days, the number's gone from 17 facilities up to 28.
The -- the gray bullet is assessments. When we were talking about 10 days ago, we were down around 900 different requests by mayors and governors to look at different facilities. Today, we're up into a thousand.
And go to the next one, I'll show you some easier roll-ups here. There's -- this is, again, a little bit easier way you can read it. When you think about pending builds -- and this is where we've probably seen the most dramatic change -- we had 23 about 10 days ago, 23 that we were ready to build. A lot of those have shifted, and we've actually built those out.
But we've also seen where the curve has flattened in certain areas. So where maybe a city thought that they were going to have a significant bed shortage, and now either they don't see as many new cases or they see they have more time, and therefore their available hospitals are able to handle that load. Some of these, fortunately, have not had to have been built out. So the numbers are a little bit lower.
And then because they are pending, there are some mayors that are still wondering, do I need some additional capability? And we're watching those closely, but I'm glad to see that the pending is down to about seven.
And then I really want to stress this bottom number. And as you remember when we started doing this -- and I'm not going to talk to you through the whole concept -- but this was an extremely complicated problem. And I knew, when we started with Governor Cuomo, 35 days ago, there's no way we were going to solve it with a complicated solution. We need something extremely simple.
So we designed a standard solution -- COVID, non-COVID -- and we also did it for hotels and dormitories, small rooms. And then really large rooms like convention centers and field houses.
And so what we've seen is that once we got that approval through HHS and FEMA, we built a lot of these. But we also took our designs. This assessments, those up top, those almost 1,100 assessments, that's actually about a 30-page document. And it said if you were going to build it, here's what we would recommend it looks like. Do you need oxygen or not, how many beds can you build.
So the states have decided to build 41 of those by themselves. And that's great, it takes a little bit off the workload off of us, but then they're able to actually put their contractors to work and to be able to site-adapt it. So it's not necessarily the Corps building all of them, but the Corps design has been utilized in 41 different states. And so I think it's a pretty powerful number.
I want to talk about just a couple here because of the -- of the ones, the 28 I showed you, every day I come back, I want to kind of tell you and use an example to kind of let you know.
Let's go to the next slide real quick. Denver, we've got two big sites we're building up there. One is called the Ranch Complex. It actually has event space for like 4-H clubs, and other kinds of different events they have.
And then right next to that, they actually have a horse arena, where they come in and they do horse shows. And in that horse arena, there's about eight inches of very, very special dirt so the horses are able to do -- to do their thing. We actually went in and took out that eight inches of dirt. And in about three days, we poured a concrete floor, and then we're right now building bed spaces in that horse arena.
Now, we had to power wash it, clean it all up. We had to make some modifications on all these. But when we go in to build, it's not only the bed space -- they're normally 10 by 10 or 12 by 12 -- but every one of those bed spaces comes with a bed. But here's the other thing. There's a nurse call -- there's a string.
And when you pull that string, a big light goes on outside of your -- of your bed area, and then the nurse is able to see that because she's got a light down in her area as well, and then they're able to know that you might need some extra help.
Oxygen is a very, very important capability. And if you think about your house, where the water comes in your house, it comes in with a big line and then it goes all throughout with pipes and it feeds all the different appliances and all the things in your house.
We did the same thing with oxygen. And so on the Denver Convention Center, which is the picture that's up here, we actually brought in a great big copper pipe, about five inches thick, and then it goes all the way throughout the Convention Center, six miles of pipe to be able to put inside that convention center.
And so every one of those bed spaces, right behind the bed, they're -- it is just exactly like the same connection you'd have in your hotel -- I mean, your hospital room. There's a place for the nurse to be able to plug in and to be able to get oxygen out there. And then we've got lights in there for people to read, there's wireless in, so those that can use their phones are able to use wireless. But it really is a combination.
And you can't get a lot of detail -- let's go to the next slide real quick, I think I've got a blow-up. You basically -- all of the blues would be the equivalent of hospital rooms. And so again, about a 12 by 12 room, if you look at the pink squares in the middle of it -- and again, these slides are all online -- you actually -- that's where the nurses' station is.
On this particular one, the Denver station, the ratio's about 20 patients to three nurses. But they're there in the nurses' station, and they kind of control those 20 different patients.
When we come in, we've got to be able to build some showers. Most of our big convention centers don't have showers. There's adequate bathroom facilities, but you've got to be able to have those (inaudible) there. We have wheelchair-accessible showers so people can go up and take -- take a shower. There's pharmacies that are built into a lot of these facilities. Some might have some X-ray equipment, there's other capabilities there.
And I want to make sure that I stress, this is basically decided by the local mayor or the governor. Governor Polis was exceptionally involved in some of the decisions in Colorado. And then when we were out with the Denver mayor, hands-on. He was down, he walked through the entire area, looked at all the different bed spaces and had a very, very good handle on what we're building out.
Let's go back real quickly to the previous slide. So when -- when you look at this, it is a big convention center. We put in the middle -- this is actually where we're building individual rooms and then that -- that particular area, it's about six football fields that are built out.
And so right now we're going to have the first one of these done tomorrow -- again, this is in a big convention center. About 600 will be built out and then this entire build is about an 18 day -- day build.
Okay, let's go by the next one and then go to the next one after that. This is kind of what it would look like when you're -- this is the second floor looking down in and you can see all of the individual rooms. And then again, all of the electrical has to come in and all of that plumbing has to come in to be able to take care of that oxygen.
And then let's go to the next one. And then here's what it looks like on the -- on the -- with the second one we're doing. The first one was the one that's complete. This is the second what I will call a football field size and then we're right in the middle of building out all of those.
Okay and go to the next one, please? And then here's an interesting one and we did this one in four days. You talk about these big ones, might take two weeks, this is actually a hotel, just like you would see on the side of a road -- about a three story hotel and this is in St. Louis and they basically asked us to come in and to be able to build out 118 beds.
So we go in and this was with the original concept I briefed about 30 days ago. We have to do some work taking the carpet out, we have to make some modifications to that HVAC [Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning] unit in the side and then we do some other things to be able to control how do you get flow in and out. And that's an important part in these facilities. Every one we design, there's pretty much -- we kind of call it a clean side and a dirty side.
So when the staff is coming in, they come in one side of the building, they come in a certain area and they put on a -- they don all of their equipment, they go through kind of a baffle and then they go into the -- the -- work on the patients and then when they're going to take a break, they go to another side, they take off their clothes and their PPE [Personal Protective Equipment], they put it on the dirty side and then they're able to go into a break area.
So even on this one here, the hotel, when you come in from the bottom, we've got to be able to make sure we always keep the clean side and the dirty side separated so we don't get anybody infected.
Okay, I think that's about it and I want to stop here and take any of your questions. I want to continue to reiterate that there are three S's of this stool. And it's the sites, is the first S, the supplies is the second S, and the staff is the third S.
We're mainly the first S, the site. So you can ask me a lot of questions about supplies and staff but I would much rather defer you back to either the DOD [Department of Defense] experts or the FEMA experts cause we are trying to take the sites out of the equation so no ambulance will ever drive to a hospital and somebody says "I'm sorry, there's no room at this hospital." We want to take that off the equation.
So with that, I'll go ahead and let's open it up.
STAFF: Okay, great. We'll start on -- on the phone first. We have Tara Copp from McClatchy. Tara, do you have a question?
Q: Yes, thank you very much for doing this and for briefing us so many times. General Semonite, I was wondering if as this has gone by, you know, one of the criticisms is that a lot of the hospital bed space hasn't been used. You guys have been putting out hospitals very quickly and they may be -- either be adapted to coronavirus cases or, you know, in the case of Seattle, ended up getting torn down before they were ever used.
Are you adjusting your modeling or adjusting how many beds you provide to make sure that this isn't going to be another -- like some of your future hospitals will be used more completely? Thank you.
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: So there's two or three different things we're seeing. We're definitely seeing that the virus is getting a vote. So the virus has changed some of the dynamics here. We thought this would be a much steeper spike and straight down. So we didn't think we'd have as much time.
Where we see we have more time to build out, we're having this dialogue and there are some mayors and governors who maybe might've thought "I needed about 1,000 but maybe let's only build 500" and we are bringing some of the numbers down.
There's other ones, Tara, where we're actually -- got the facility ready to go to perhaps 1,000 and I'll use, like, for instance those six football fields, they might say build two of them but wait another week until we see what happens and then build us the third one in another week.
We want to be very, very agile -- and the real decision maker here is that mayor or that governor that's out there. We basically build what they ask us to build, we give them the best advice and -- and this is probably going to be an interim solution.
The other thing I want to tell you -- and -- and I -- we don't know how this is going to play out. A -- a couple of these have had a seven month lease. The leadership in a particular city has said "we don't know whether this is coming back in the fall or not, so let's make the investment to build it and at least we have it." It's almost like insurance. It is a good reserve.
And a couple of mayors have asked me, you know, "what do you think?" And I say "boy, if the -- you have hospital beds that never get used, I don't think that's a problem ‘cause you had the -- the ability to be able to take care of the people from your city."
So that would really be a good question for a governor or a mayor but I think at the end of the day, it's a relatively small cost to be able to have the capability to be able to keep people alive.
STAFF: Great. We'll go back to the phone line and then I'll answer some questions in the room. So Sydney Freedberg from Breaking Defense?
Q: Hi. Sydney Freedberg, General, from Breaking Defense. Thank you. You have a lot of great figures on your site. Do you actually have a figure for how many beds were -- capacity have been handed over to operational use?
Because obviously, you know, sometimes if you're building a site, you know, you -- you -- until it's 100 percent complete, it's not usable. In other cases, you said you're building in modules. So a site that might be, you know, 15 percent complete might actually have 15 percent of its beds available for use and that's -- that's in the ones -- so I can't tell from the diagrams you have on the site yet but I think it's important to know how many beds are actually available for use?
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Sydney, I don't believe we have that on the infographic and I -- I agree with you. I think that's something that we can certainly do. There's probably a little bit of a lag -- a one or two day lag as to when the contractor gets done and does that mean that actually we've cleaned that area and -- and there's somebody ready to go in there?
But let us take a look and see how we can keep that up and -- and it might be off by five or 10 percent but we could continue to be able to keep that. There are some where they know that they want us to build all of the bed spaces -- that's why I call them bed spaces -- but they know that they might have a couple hundred beds still down in the warehouse and they have not made a decision to actually bring the beds in cause they know they have what they feel is adequate right now.
So we'll try to find a way of giving you a little bit of a better assessment.
STAFF: -- question from the room. Meghann Myers from Military Times?
Q: Hi. So a couple of weeks ago, you said you guys were, in a way, sort of running out of time for mayors to make these decisions and then have a few weeks to get everything built out. Are you seeing now that that timeline is expanding a little bit or there's a little bit more time to think about what -- what they want?
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: We definitely are. We've pretty much thought that most of this was going to probably peak out -- now I'm talking 30 days ago, 24 April was kind of the day we were all worried about. But now what we're really seeing is so much different variations. I mean, we're looking -- right now, we're building one in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, okay? So what happens on an island is perhaps a little bit different than what happens in an urban area. We're seeing in the rural areas, obviously a little bit different timing.
So that's given us more time to build, for one. Some of the curves we're seeing are, clearly in May, we have a couple of these Meghann that are actually in June right now. And I don't necessarily -- we talked about modeling, we are informed by the vice president's task force. We want to make sure we're listening to whatever else is -- but at the end of the day, it's the -- it's that governor.
Governor DeSantis, I was with him last week, or when I talked to you 10 days ago. And I think my guy said, to be able to build up the Miami Convention Center, we needed until the 27th of April.
And the governor said, That's not good enough, Todd. I need it by the night of the 20th.
Today's the 17th, my guys will have it done by the night of the 20th. So everything is changing.
STAFF: Sir, Tom Bowman from NPR had a question.
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Tom?
Q: General, first of all, thanks for doing this. I want to get back to some of the places you've left -- Seattle, the CenturyLink Center, you had two field hospitals there, I understand and no -- no patient was -- any of those hospitals, is that correct?
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: So Seattle's a little bit confusing. There was going to be an alternative care facility that we were going to build for the -- the mayor of Seattle, okay? So that's kind of one thing. At the same time, DOD put in field hospitals.
I don't necessarily have anything to do with that hospital. We clearly work for DOD and NORTHCOM [U.S. Northern Command], but that particular hospital is pretty much a capability that was a DOD capability. So I would defer you back to DOD and let them address the field hospitals.
I think they -- at one point, they had planned to put in that capability side-by-side, very similar to what the soldiers and service members are doing in Javits. You know, that's more of a marriage there. The vast majority of our 28 are basically built out for that city, and then the city is pretty much figuring out the staff.
There are some that DOD are in -- I know General O'Shaughnessy has talked recently to you -- but I think his concept now is where he's got the capability to put DOD service members in hospitals. That's working very well, as well. So we're seeing, I think -- and every one of these is almost a custom application of, you know, what works best for that city or that entity.
Q: And one other thing, too, you mentioned how your personnel have been -- had their temperatures taken --
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Right.
Q: -- they're being asked where they've traveled to. How many of your folks have tested positive for the virus? And as everyone knows, you really have to test everyone. General McConville said yesterday, he would like to test the entire Army. What's being done, if anything, to test your personnel?
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: So actually, the Army leadership had a big discussion about this last night, and I know that General McConville is personally very interested in trying to get more testing capability; Secretary McCarthy said the same thing.
We have to be able to wait until those capabilities come around. And so until then, we're doing every single thing else we can. I told you about the temperature guns, you know, when you go into buildings now -- I'd like to think that at some point, we have that capability.
On the other hand, I personally think that if we could continue to use all these other measures and be exceptionally prudent, then maybe the people that need the testing equipment should have it more -- a higher priority. And then most of our guys -- because they're very, very conscious.
And the contractors are exceptionally worried. They're worried, we've got them -- we've got our thumb on them to be able to get a building done. They know if they have a bunch of people that get infected, they'll slow down.
So I'd love to have the more capability, but there's other people in this national concern that are probably much, much more higher on the priority list and we're going to figure it out and we will stay.
On exact numbers, like anybody, we've seen about the same ratio. And most of these are people that have been affected by somewhere in their town or something else.
What we have seen though -- and we've been very lucky, knock on wood, but -- as soon as we see somebody who is tested, we put them in quarantine and then I'm -- my leadership calls them almost every day and sees how they're doing, and I have a chaplain and I have a medical service officer. And then those two guys set the conditions for all the rest of the 36,000 of us to be able to make sure that we're all staying healthy.
STAFF: So Jennifer Griffin from Fox News.
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Yeah, Jennifer, go ahead.
Q: Hi. Sir, how much would it cost to convert, ballpark, something like a Denver Convention Center? Explain to us how the funding for that works. Who's paying for it?
And then what will you do with these alternate care facilities? You said there's a seven-month lease. But some of these, if you poured concrete, are you going to just tear them down at the end or reconvert them back? It seems like some of these could be white elephants in the end.
And then finally, in D.C. [District of Columbia], have you been asked to convert that convention center? What are you doing here in D.C.?
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: So we'll talk cost. All of these are a little bit different. The cost share is normally 75-25: 75 federal, 25 local. It makes a little bit of a difference if the president has declared that an actual, you know, national disaster. But I think all 50 states have been declared, so that cost share's working out.
FEMA is the one paying the federal share for this. And most of the time, we go in and we look at what does the mayor want to have done, and then we kind of cost that out. And most of the time, we're able to stay within that budget. Now, if the mayor really wants this done faster than we can and you've got to work a 24-hour shift than maybe a 12-hour shift, that cost might go up. My team that works with FEMA is involved in those discussions.
But I got to admit, I mean, I love working for FEMA. Money has not been an issue with necessarily FEMA here when it comes to saving lives. And I think that's the right call.
We go out of our way, we competitively bid these, we make sure we're getting contractors who are certified. Every single one of our contracts is done in accordance, what's called the Federal Acquisition Rules, the FAR. So we want to make sure that we do this, our contracts are put on the website so everybody can see our contracts. And -- and then we continue to try to get the best value for the federal government.
Now, on the -- the question of how long is a great question that I think we have to have at -- at the national level. Some of these, if you've got a hotel, and let's assume the hotel was even out of business, okay? I don't think this one was, but if it was out of business, and all of a sudden, we make a decision that maybe we want to have this hotel as a reserve for St. Louis for eight or nine months, that's probably not a bad investment, to kind of put it in a mothball status through the summer.
And you've got to listen to the vice president's task force if this is going to come back in the fall, but I don't know. But theoretically, something like that is something I think the mayor or the city would continue to be able to keep on reserve.
Because of the cost -- and the city is bearing 25 percent of that cost -- they've got to make a financial decision and all of those are going to be a little bit different. Now, if it's a horse arena and Colorado's got one here, and you've got another one 20 miles away, then you might say, let's keep that one.
And I think the biggest question that we're -- we're trying to help think through this, convention centers are a massive amount of money generation for cities. And you've heard the president say we need to get the economy and get America back up to working. So this is where, on some of these, we'll go back in and we'll -- I mean, I think the city, a lot of these -- the city will make that decision. Do they take that back out?
These are not necessarily things you can just break down. There's some of this that you can maybe put in mil vans and save for another one. But we're really waiting to see how those individual decisions are made on every one of those.
And then, again, I think we've got to really kind of figure out how long is this with us and at what point do you downscale. Was that your third question? I --
Q: D.C. was the --
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: The D.C. So the D.C. one -- and I think if -- I don't know if we -- you don't need to bring the slides up. There was a decision made yesterday on the D.C. Convention Center that we're -- we're getting ready to start building there. I don't have the contract data yet, but my guys are still working through that. I know the mayor was concerned. I don't even think -- I think it could be anywhere from 500 to 1,500. We're watching the numbers. And maybe next time I come I'll use that as my focus one and we'll show you what's going on.
And at any point, what we'd love to do, as long as you don't mind following our force protections, I'd love to take some of you in there and we can walk you through the D.C. Convention Center. As long as you promise to say six feet apart we'll walk you in, and you can go touch everything and see exactly how it works, and we'd love to do that. We've taken other reporters into our facilities as long as the mayor doesn't have a problem. There's some that don't want press in, but most of the time when we're building -- and they want to be transparent -- I'll let their city know that the -- the leadership is doing something. A good question.
Q: It's just the -- the cost of the Denver Convention Center ballpark, not percentage of --
(CROSSTALK)
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Yeah, I -- I don't know exactly. I thought I heard it was something around $35 million, something like that. Now, that's a big build, okay? That's a -- that's -- and again, on -- on some of these, when we're actually going in to put in that oxygen some of those might -- it -- it'd be easy if we had, like, an underground pipe that came from, you know, a great, big, gigantic oxygen plant in the town. You don't. You've got to -- you've got to make the oxygen. You've got to bring it in. So we actually have to make like a little factory, and -- around the back side, and it's a bunch of tanks we build. Some of them, we're able to get, actually, great big trucks and we bring -- it's like bringing a, you know, great, big tanker in and plug it in. But some of those mechanical parts are hard.
Every one of those nurses' stations has sinks, okay? So now in the Convention Center, all of those -- all's got to drain down in the floor. You've got to have hot water, cold water. You've got to be able to have a place to take the trash out.
So again, we want to do this safe, and right now we are much more focused on time and safety. Those are our big ones. Money is critical, but I don't want to, you know, try to pinch a dime here and have somebody get killed.
STAFF: Sir, we'll go to the phone --
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Okay.
STAFF: -- with Rose Thayer from Stars and Stripes.
Q: Hey there. I appreciate you doing this, and I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about if any other projects that you were working on before the pandemic, such as contracts for the border wall or other builds on bases are being deferred or slowed down to allow your staff to focus on this.
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: So the Corps of Engineers does really three major, big programs. We build for the Department of Defense, and anywhere from barracks to hospitals to ranges to runways. And so those projects inside of a military installation, where we have the ability to be able to keep work going, we are continuing to try to keep that going. Obviously, national security's a big deal. We don't know when the Department of Defense will be called on, so that's where we want to continue to keep those projects.
There are some areas where due to, perhaps, a concern with a given commander, or if there's a stop-work order by, perhaps, an elected official somewhere the contractors might have a hard time getting to those projects. We've seen some, but I would say that number's relatively small -- five to 10 percent, something like that, and most of those are ones that we're able to work around and -- and hopefully, get people back up and -- and working.
We also do a massive amount of what's called civil works. These are taking care of America's waterways. If you kind of think of highways with the Department of Transportation, America's waterways is the Corps of Engineers. So things like locks and dams -- if you don't know, right now we've got a massive flood in the Mississippi River and we're worried about that water level down in New Orleans. Those guys are down there fixing levies this morning in case there's some levy that might have been -- had -- had an impact.
When you think about barges, running materials up and down the road, we've got all of their waterways continue to operate. So just think about a highway with a tollbooth, and somebody's got to go through. When you've got to come to a lock and dam and you're bringing materials in, we want to make sure that that capability goes. We do the majority of the hydropower for America so our hydro plants are continuing to op, and we run 715 locks and dams.
As long as I can be assured that our employees are safe and that it is mission-essential -- and that is the guidance we've taken from the Department of Defense -- if we need to do those functions, then we will continue to have people on the ground doing it. The vast majority of our staff is teleworking, and we've expanded our amount of telework from 5,000 people to almost up to 40,000. We didn't have enough ability to get everybody into the computer, and just in the last 30 days now we have 40,000 connections. So the -- most of the -- if you were going to design a building, we can do that virtual with 10 different people on the phone and do all that on the computers.
And then like the V.A. [Veterans Affairs] hospital, we also work for the interagency. So right now we're building $8 billion of V.A. hospitals. That is just as important, and we don't want to slow down because the veterans continue to need those capabilities, as well.
So we're trying to take every single account, and a lot of that depends on the decision maker of who we're working for. If we're working for the -- Secretary Wilkie and the V.A. and he's -- tells us go/no go, we will obviously follow their guidance. But right now we're taking a very, very deliberate look at, how critical is that project, and do we need to keep doing that, or can we take some degree of a -- of a pause on that?
STAFF: Sir, the last question will go to Barbara Starr --
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Good.
STAFF: -- CNN.
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Barbara, good to see you.
Q: Hi, sir. Can you go back for a minute? You talked about a upward curve in June of a couple of places that you had been advised of. Can you tell us where you see those curves going back up in June? And to follow up on one of the earlier questions you had, do you -- if you don't have it today, could you get us an exact number of positive cases within the Army Corps of Engineers? How many people, if you have an ability to include contractors? Because you all do travel all over the country -- and including yourself. You've been all over the country. Have you had any reason to be tested?
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: So let me take these in a little bit different order. I know that we're going to follow the Department of Defense guidance on the releasing of numbers, and I know that there's been some different changes on that. So let me make sure that I understand what my parameters are to be able to do that.
I will say that our numbers, I believe, are lower on average than any other -- than most of the other agencies that we're seeing. And again, it is not in any way having an impact on us. Most of these people, we identified extremely early. Some got it from their spouse, okay? And so then we immediately quarantine them. We do have a -- a -- a section that are quarantined.
On me particularly, only because the secretary has allowed me to go. He gives me a special plane. We have a team that goes in and cleans the plane to a degree. I told about how we're all making sure we're checking the pilots. On some of these when I have to do an overnight we actually get a room that hasn't been used in two weeks. I have a Ph.D. microbiologist that travels with me and we do special things -- nothing that is different than just using good common sense. But you know, cleaning hands frequently, all of those kind of things. We're very cautious if we're going to get eat-out food. We go out of our way to try to make sure that we're all protected.
And at some point, I mean, I am worried always about, you know, our -- our teams, but I think that if everybody does the prudent measures that the leadership in this country have asked us to do, then I think we're going to continue to be able to build. And that's our -- our goal, is to continue to be able to build out.
Q: You've not had to be tested?
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: I have not had any significant tests. I get my temperature taken 10 times a -- you know, no, 100 times a day, probably, something like that. I have not.
But on the other hand, I -- I -- my aide and I look at each other every morning. I go into my ops (inaudible). We sit six feet apart, everybody -- we actually have a meeting and it's very similar to the Pentagon -- three different conference rooms, they're all in different places in the building, everybody's on the VTC [Video Teleconference].
And, Barbara, your first question again?
Q: You mentioned that you --
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: This curve.
Q: -- curved in June.
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Yeah. I -- I -- maybe I -- maybe I said it wrong. I'm not sure that they're going up. What we're seeing is the curve is elongated. So where we thought it was going to kind of go up and come back down, we're seeing that -- that curve stretch all the way out to perhaps as far as June.
I think the ones that I'm seeing as -- as we're looking out on the -- in some of the islands, I've got a team that's working in Hawaii, we're worried about Guam, too, to a degree, we're working in Alaska right now. We're seeing in some of the remote locations there's some additional time.
Other ones, you'd be surprised. You might have one state that is right in the middle of perhaps, you know, end of April and then two states away, their -- their curves are showing a little bit different. And -- and we don't know. We're looking at all of these just trying to get the best advice we can but we want to try to figure out those curves.
Q: What's your assessment about rural America as we progress into the summer as you see this curve?
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: Yeah, I'm probably not the right guy. I think as we look at this, I -- I -- the easy way is I don't make decisions on all of the United States. I look at every one of these individual sites on there and then we do a deep dive. I have the modelers go in, I look at City X and then we figure out contractors, the facility, and it's a lot easier to solve this problem by doing the deep dive than trying to figure out.
Let me just end with -- is that the last we do -- is that the last one?
STAFF: -- last one, sir -- that's the last one.
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: We can go with this lady over here. We can do one more real quick. Go ahead.
Q: I appreciate it. I know you mentioned earlier that you guys are doing a lot to make sure you're testing people's temperatures to make sure no one is spreading it, but for those who are working as contractors on the border wall, there have been reports that they are going out partying together, they're going in large groups into stores, so communities are concerned that they're going to spread it to other communities.
What is your -- what do you say to those communities to ease those concerns and are you implementing measures to monitor contractors when they're actually not working, to make sure that they're adhering to those social distancing --
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: So we had a big video -- video -- big session yesterday with my commanders. They wrote me last night. I've got several contractors out there. By every one of those contractors, what are the measures they're taking?
And what we're seeing is actually more stringent measures on those contractors than probably some of other contractors that don't work for the Corps of Engineers. They're going out of their way -- I think every one of those is actually individual thermometered every single morning, and then when it comes to work site they're -- got masks on, they're -- most of these are distributed -- they don't have a bunch of people all working in a group, they're -- they're pretty much spread out throughout the area, they've got signs everywhere and then if there's -- on the -- some of the -- I think some of the concerns were these big, gigantic camps. We don't necessarily have that, we've got them distributed, and then if there is a mayor that's concerned, we're going back out to that individual mayor and saying "hey, here's exactly where our guys are living and here's the protections that we're doing there."
I've heard about one allegation somewhere that everybody's out partying. These guys are working 18 hours a day. Most of these guys are getting up in the morning, they're going to work and they're coming right back and they're staying inside of their -- their enclave.
But these contractors -- we've told them up front, we are cutting you no slack on anything to do with the virus and if we find a problem, we'll come right back in and we have the tools built into the contract to be able to apply additional, you know, scrutiny.
But I'll tell you what, from what my commanders -- and I've got my guys on the ground every day checking them. What we're seeing in that particular project is an extremely high level of diligence as it comes to taking care of people.
Q: -- I'm sorry. You said you're worried about Guam. Is that because it spread from the Roosevelt? What -- why is it --
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: No, I worry about Guam ‘cause it's an island. Anywhere there's an island, I worry. I worried about Puerto Rico and we put 66,000 power poles in Puerto Rico. It's hard to get stuff there and so that's where -- obviously there's a lot of other challenges there with, you know, other -- other actions they're working but I just want to make sure -- and my guys have advised the leadership out there "here's what we can do" and I think they're looking -- there's, I think, a SEABEE [U.S. Navy Construction Battalion] battalion out there helping right now doing some things. I'll stay out of that ‘cause I don't know the details --
Q: -- challenge is 600-plus Roosevelt sailors tested positive. I mean, that's a challenge.
LT. GEN. SEMONITE: And -- and I'll leave that up to probably the leadership from INDOPACOM cause they're -- they're tracking it. I just know when we're called to be able to support -- if General O'Shaughnessy needs us to do something in Guam, we're going to jump in and do it and we've got some plans to do it.
Let me just end by saying -- and I told you up front, this is without a doubt the most important thing we're doing. I continue to get -- I was in the White House two hours ago and I continue to get guidance from the most senior leaders of this nation that says whatever you need, let us know.
We briefed them on this concept and I kind of laid out where the facilities are going in, how this kind of plays out and we continue to get overwhelming support from the President, the Vice President, and the rest of the leaders of FEMA and HHS on whatever we can do.
And it goes back to this idea that I don't know when this is over. All I know is that all of us are very, very focused and we want to do whatever we can to set the conditions that hotel bed space -- I mean hospital bed space is not going to be a critical factor.
We've still got -- you know, I'm sure a lot of things we've got to do with the supply side and with the staff side but we just wanted to make sure that the site piece was taken out. So we'll be back whenever the team wants us to come back but I am very, very serious, I'd love to offer you to come in one of our facilities. And then wherever we're at, you know, we'll be more than willing -- and we're building, like I said, in 28 different locations with more coming on board.
So thanks for your questions and thanks for your attention. We'll see you. Thanks.
STAFF: Thanks for joining us.