Amish makes 55,000 masks

The Amish community made over 55,000 masks for health care workers and patients in Ohio.

Where the answer came from.

N-b-c senior national correspondent chris jansing has our story.

:00 the bucolic quiet of amish country in ohio isn't the first place you'd think to go when tackling a global pandemic but that's exactly what happened.

The cleveland clinic has 55-thousand employees - plus visitors and they needed masks.

(sot: samrit sandhu/exec.

Director, cleveland clinic supply chain:16-:19 *quick*) "we just couldn't get them anywhere so the solutions had to be local//and most commercial manufacturers wouldn't meet our demand in the time we wanted" nearby holmes county has the country's largest amish community - so they turned to nearby holmes county and the country's largest amish community where traditions like raising a barn in a day embody the amish's legendary can-do spirit and while the amish reject most modern technology including tv one man agreed to this rare interview (nat pop) so a local business leader with deep ties to the amish, put out a call jansing: a request was made and just (snaps) that fast the amish community responded amish: we do try, if there's a need somewhere, maybe an example would be a fire or a - or a sickness in the family, we do try to get together and we try to help.

Here were a need for --- our neighbors.

So if the amish could raise a barn in a day they could mobilize to make masks amish sot: "we have four girls in our house and - they all sew.// jansing: "so did you asked them to be a part of this?"

Amish: they are a part of it.

// three of the girls and mom.

So-- jansing: so four.

And-- amish:yeah.

Not-- not myself.

In this 20 mile radius - there are 5400 amish households with an estimated ten thousand seamstresses.

So boxes of supplies were quickly assembled and distributed...for gatherings known as sewing frolics (nats) "that bags that the put back into, the directions.."

"the do the sewing put them back in, and we pick them back up .."

"operation stop covid 19" was i full swing in 48 hours the cleveland clinic had twelve thousand masks..eventually 150,000 of them then companies where the amish work stepped up too and with so many amish out of work because of coronavirus, dutchman hospitality offered to launder the masks, berlin gardens switched from making lawn furniture to as many as 150,000 face shields a day.

And keim lumber store is handling logistics they also supply to 22-hundred local millworkers, most of them amish - who started making hardwood dividers for new york field hospitals (sot: jim smucker/keim lumber1:48-1:54) "but others have built beds //its just really, the amish care deeply about other people, and are very giving, and this