LONG BEACH, California – Vivian Hurtado and Mica Randall tried to stay out of it.
It’s been two months since Los Angeles County banned an on-site eatery from halting a record-breaking coronavirus hospitalization. But the couple – Hurtado, a veterinary assistant, Randall a contractor – knew that the trendy restaurant directly behind their apartment was still serving customers on its back patio anyway. They thought Restauration was doing just that.
Dana Tanner, the extremely charming owner and face of the place, has consistently said keeping her patio open is a matter of her workers’ survival. But like so many coronavirus villains over the past year, she also seems to embrace the notoriety that opposes public order amid a pandemic. Before New Year’s Eve, when the ICU capacity in Los Angeles County was at 0 percent, Restauration advertised a personal meal on its patio – and then doubled when a local news organization inquired about it.
The Long Beach City Department of Health has ordered the restaurant to close a week later for violating coronavirus rules. Not long after, Tanner invited restaurant owners and journalists back to her patio for a meeting in which she urged others to follow her lead. “It’s wrong for us to be locked up and discriminated against,” Tanner told other business owners in an interview with The Daily Beast.
Finally, on January 23, city utility workers show up in the middle of Saturday’s brunch and shut down the guest from the restaurant. But if it was a real attempt to stop Tanner’s antics, it was not a successful attempt, but rather an increasingly bizarre series of events showing companies in California writing their own safety rules during COVID-19. crisis.
That Saturday night, Hurtado and Randall, unaware that Restauration had lost its guest earlier in the day, were watching TV at home, they recall. They could hear some kind of work being done outside their living room window, which happened to be located above the gas meters for their building. Then, suddenly, they hear a loud, screaming sound, like the sound of gas escaping from a pipe, they tell The Daily Beast in separate interviews.
They filled an overwhelming smell of gas, and Hurtado sent Randall outside to see what was going on.
There, Randall encountered Tanner and an unknown man. “Oh, it’s just me, Dana,” Randall remembered saying. “He’s almost got a cap on.”
Randall felt it was just some routine maintenance and gave it back to his wife. They tried to ventilate the apartment.
Only the next day did they check the news and realize that Restauration’s utility had been turned off.
Tanner is now facing charges of misconduct due to an unauthorized gas pipeline that city workers found at the property the next day, when gas workers, police and firefighters arrived after receiving reports of a suspected leak. Tanner is accused of tampering with gas lines, setting up an illicit gas pipeline and allowing the operation of a restaurant without the required health permit, in addition to the costs his customers serve on the patio. She has not yet pleaded, but a criminal lawyer handling the case will attend on February 19 on her behalf, she said in an interview.
‘Tampering with the gas pipeline has significantly increased this issue. It was something that endangered the health and safety of neighbors, and we felt there was no choice but to take action, ‘said Long Beach City Prosecutor Doug Haubert in a statement. email said.
Tanner denies tampering with the gas line, suggesting that someone installed the new one without her knowledge. Tanner asked for more details about what happened that night and said she was just showing a friend what the city did. The friend then started “playing” with the gas line, Tanner said.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s not do this. “And then I walked away from it,” Tanner told The Daily Beast.
“The gas pipeline has been opened,” she admitted. ‘I did not do it. I was like, ‘No, not OK.’ ‘
The friend then closed the line, Tanner claims, and they both went home. She blamed an unidentified third party for installing a line connecting another apartment tenant’s gas meter to her business without her knowledge.
“Did I go out there to see what the city did? Absolutely. It was my guest and they took it illegally. I was hesitant about it, “said Tanner. ‘But did I switch it? No. And was it switched that night? Absolutely not. “
“I went back there with a police officer,” she added. “And I personally did not smell gas.”
With regard to the opening of her patio during the coronavirus boom, Tanner was far from alone in dealing with pandemic resistance at the national level – and especially in southern California. The region played host to flashbacks of anti-maskers looting shopping malls, a Christian rock singer and anti-mask unleashing his fans on a slide. premises at Dodger Stadium. One restaurant owner in nearby Huntington Beach went viral late last year for banning customers or employees from wearing masks and arguing that it was a symbol of control and dedication. ‘
Business trade groups have waged their own campaigns against COVID rules in the state. The California Restaurant Association has claimed that less than 5 percent of the cases come from dining out, and more than a dozen restaurants have sued Gavin Newsom over the restrictions.
But Tanner is facing a strikingly long-running challenge that has hurt local authorities.
On Thursday afternoon, Restauration was open for business, although there was no longer a health permit or gas. According to Lucas Meyer, who works there as a server, there are currently 36 people and most nights are full. Several couples left or waited to sit during a 20-minute visit by The Daily Beast. A sign on the back patio warned anyone of ‘government or law enforcement’ that they were not welcome. The staff cooked and cleaned with an electric fryer, an electric fryer and an electric heater.
‘Many of these places that have been closed will never come back from it. But I can still make money and support myself. So I really appreciate it, ”said Meyer.
For her part, Tanner maintains that she is not in itself an anti-mask or pandemic denier – even because the prosecutor claims that authorities do not enforce any masks or social distance when they quoted the restaurant last month over his rogue terrace. not. Tanner said she kept the lower-capacity patio open – that it previously had 85 people – in line with the guidelines set out by LA County earlier in the pandemic.
Her rhetoric sometimes creeps into denial zone.
“The danger, the livelihood of our residents, has for me a higher mortality rate than this virus has and who affects it,” she said of restrictions on pandemics. “And I’m not saying it’s not real, but what’s happening to these young people in their twenties, and my kids and the other businesses in the block?”
Last year, Tanner received a $ 71,600 PPP loan under the CARES Act, as reported by the Long Beach Post. She said the money only covers what the restaurant lost in the first three months of the pandemic, when they agreed to only pick up according to the earlier guidelines. But her ongoing legal battle could pose its own financial challenge: Tanner is currently facing 21 charges of felony and up to $ 52,000 in fines.
Earlier this month, she filed a petition against Long Beach and his health department, claiming that her guest had been turned off illegally, that there was ‘no reliable data’ linking the distribution of COVID-19 to restaurants and asking for her health permit. . to be returned. She filed the petition with the help of a civil lawyer and did not want to say how much she was paying for his services.
She acknowledged that the lawsuit could end up being more expensive than just a takeaway. “It could be. But that’s the principle of the matter,” she said.
It is true that there is limited data on the dangers of the outdoors, but the absence of data does not mean that it is safe. “When you go to a restaurant, you tend to be close to people you have not been close to, and who are longer,” are two factors that can easily spread the infection, says Dr. Timothy Brewer. , an epidemiologist at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Outdoors were allowed back into LA County after the Newsom government eased restrictions late last month. Of course, Restauration never closed in the first place. The fact is that local authorities are not lost, but they do not seem to be responsible for Tanner’s liability.
“It was a little unusual for the business to continue after the gas was quiet,” Deputy City Attorney Art Sanchez said in an interview, adding that inspectors could not succeed because Tanner “told them the ability to enter and inspect. “(‘That was when we were quoted,’ she replies in a text message. ‘Since the mandate was lifted, I have not granted access.’)
Sanchez noted that a civil warrant to enforce an inspection is still a possibility – but also that Tanner could return her health permit if her civil case is successful. The city also warned Restauration’s landlords that they could eventually be held liable.
“It’s a unique situation, but we’re doing what we can under these types of parameters,” Sanchez said.
Hurtado, the neighbor who lives in the apartment next door, said she initially did not complain about Restauration leaving its patio open due to the difficult situation in which many small business owners find themselves. But after the gas incident, she no longer remains silent.
“She really crossed the line,” Hurtado said. “I just can no longer support it when she involved our innocent bystanders who really had nothing to do with it.”