The arrival of the COVID-19 virus in New Braunfels last year rapidly changed the way paramedics and firefighters â the people at the front of the frontlines â did their jobs.
Paramedic Robert Garcia, a 25-year veteran of the New Braunfels Fire Department, said when the virus arrived in March 2020, the city and the department immediately put new guidelines and restrictions in place to confront what at the time was an illness with a lot of unknowns.
âThey had the death meter running on TV and terms like âessential personnel,â âcentral personnel,â âan abundance of caution,ââ Garcia said. âWith all that happening, everybodyâs immediately suspicious of any contact surfaces, any interactions, touching your eyes â everything they told us. We immediately go from eating at a restaurant or a buffet, and everybody is handling everything to everyoneâs using hand sanitizer. Once we started interacting with our public, the fir