The Tragedy Of 'St. Joe's'

The people in the yellow hazmat suits arrived at St. Joseph's Senior Home in Woodbridge, N.J., on a crisp morning in late March, emerging from blue and white ambulance buses all suited up, like astronauts descending from a lunar rover.

For the 78 residents whom they had come to evacuate on March 25, however, this all felt more like an alien abduction. As the hazmats approached, some residents shouted and furiously clawed at the air; others begged not to be taken away, clutching the nuns' sleeves, dissolving into tears.

The sisters who ran St. Joseph's told the residents' families later they'd never seen anything like it. "People were loaded up like cattle," said one person who saw the events unfold. "It was horrible. ... When I close my eyes, even today, I still see it."

That day St. Joseph's — most people call it "St. Joe's" — became the only long-term care facility in New Jersey to be entirely evacuated during the pandemic, and no other long-term facilities in the state have been cleared out in the same way since.