Kirk Siegler
Kirk Siegler reports for NPR, based out of NPR West in California.
Siegler grew up near Missoula, MT, and received a B.A. in journalism from the University of Colorado. He’s an avid skier and traveler in his spare time.
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As the wildfire season is beginning, some wild land firefighters are worried their safety could be at risk since the government has been slow to adopt new COVID-19 protocols.
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The COVID-19 crisis has forced us to move almost everything online. But more than one-third of the U.S. population in rural areas has little or no access to the Internet. -
Some businesses and activists want to end prolonged closures that were imposed to block the spread of the coronavirus. Health experts warn a premature opening could create another surge of the virus. -
In the rural Northwest, far-right elected officials and the militia movements they're aligned with are calling for defiance of stay-at-home orders like the one issued by Idaho's Republican governor. -
Small-town hospitals were already closing at an alarming rate before COVID-19, but now the trend appears to be accelerating just as the disease arrives in rural America. -
There's still a serious shortage of testing for COVID-19 across the country. Many people who are sick and showing likely symptoms say they still can't get tested. -
Like many resort towns, Sun Valley, Idaho is full of global travelers and wealthy owners of second homes. It's now an epicenter for coronavirus infection, and local leaders want to restrict travel.
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Some states in the rural West are still reporting very low numbers of COVID-19 cases. But there are pockets with high infection rates: wealthy resort towns with a lot of visitor traffic. -
There was already a shortage of medical personnel in rural America before the coronavirus. Medical staffing firms are now trying to send health workers to underserved small towns. -
The Trump administration has extended the appointment for the controversial acting head of the Bureau of Land Management, which is in charge of roughly 10% of all the land in the U.S.
