RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — There's Zumba and boxing classes, lectures on business and taxes, and chalk art outside for the children.

While it might sound like a local recreation center's offerings, it's actually part of daily life for 195 American citizens quarantined on a military base after being evacuated from the heart of a new virus outbreak in China.

The cluster of American consular officials, businesspeople and families with children were whisked out of the city of Wuhan on a U.S.-chartered plane last week. Since then, they have formed their own community while waiting to be released from a 14-day federal quarantine order designed to limit the virus' spread.

They hold a daily “town hall” meeting to receive updates from officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and discuss travel plans. There is an early morning jogging group and some who run stairs to stay in shape at March Air Reserve Base, said Matthew McCoy, a theme park designer and one of the evacuees.

Last weekend, there was a pizza party for the Super Bowl with two television screens outside the two-story building where they're being housed in modest hotel-style rooms. They're planning a flag football game and another party before evacuees scatter to Atlanta, New York and other cities to reunite with family.

“It's not a cruise ship, you know, but we're trying to make it as an overall team,” McCoy said in an interview over Skype. “That's what we're hoping the other camps do. We're still humans.”

The group was the first placed under federal quarantine order because of the new strain of coronavirus, which has sickened more than 20,000 people and killed nearly 500, virtually all in China.

Two more planes carrying about 350 Americans arrived Wednesday at other California military bases and two more are expected Thursday and Friday at bases in Nebraska and Texas. All passengers will be quarantined for 14 days.

At March Air Reserve Base east of Los Angeles, meals are catered, including breakfast burritos and noodles and chicken. There's baby food and kid-friendly options like chicken nuggets, and soda and water, McCoy said.

A non-profit group brought toys for the children and toiletries to make it feel more like home, he said.

“Real soap, not hotel soap. We're talking Irish Spring and Zest,” he said.

They also brought in a coffee machine, where McCoy bumps into other evacuees on middle-of-the-night runs. Many are still working remotely in China, which has a 16-hour time difference.

These furnishings and support from federal and local officials, he said, have helped the group band together to make the most of the highly unusual circumstance of being whisked out of a shut-down city and placed under the first federal quarantine order in the United States in more than 50 years.

The Americans who arrived Wednesday flew on two U.S.-chartered jets and landed at Travis Air Force Base, located in Northern California between San Francisco and Sacramento. About half are being housed there and the others were flown to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar just outside San Diego. Miramar is the former home of the Navy flight school that inspired the film “Top Gun.”

At Travis, they will live in a base hotel. There is a large outdoor area and common spaces in addition to individual rooms. At a Miramar, some are staying at the Consolidated Bachelor Quarters. Images provided by the military show a communal dining area with large dispensers of breakfast cereal, a laundry room and an auditorium, playground and lecture hall. Others are staying at an inn on the base.

Dr. Christopher Braden, the CDC's lead representative at Miramar, said the roughly 170 passengers were of all ages, including infants. He said they were in “a difficult situation.”

“They’re allowed 70 pounds of luggage to carry on board with them, Braden said, “So there’s not very much they have in the way of personal belongings, and so we need to do what we can to make sure that they’re well cared for."

They are free to roam their quarantined areas and will have phone and internet access.

The CDC isn’t recommending face masks or other protective gear but suggests that everyone keep a distance of about 6 feet (1.8 meters).

Anyone who exhibits coronavirus symptoms will be isolated in a medical facility. Three adults and a child at Miramar were found to have fever or a cough and brought to local hospitals Wednesday evening, the CDC said.

In Riverside County, some evacuees still wear face masks and keep their distance, but people are friendly to each other, said Jarred Evans, a former University of Cincinnati quarterback now playing professionally in China .

“Everything has been pretty chill,” Evans said.

But many face also challenges such as family stuck in China and business disruptions. McCoy said much of his work has slowed and he's been seeking help to keep supporting his son.

Kimmy McDaniel, co-founder of the non-profit Project Strong One, said she was moved to try to help the evacuees, noting many work for the State Department.

Her group furnished bikes and games for the kids, hair conditioner, diapers, and “anything and everything that would help make this transition more palatable and a positive experience,” she said.

There is also a round-the-clock mobile health clinic. One child was sent to the hospital with a fever, accompanied by a parent, and returned to the base after testing negative for the virus, said Jose Arballo Jr., a spokesman for the county's public health agency. Another child ran a fever on Wednesday and was sent to the hospital and is awaiting test results, he said.

For this first group, the quarantine will end Tuesday. But those arriving on later flights are just beginning their journey. “The American spirit provides,” McCoy said. “Everybody's nice to everybody. I think that's going to happen in all the other places.”

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Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat and Julie Watson in San Diego, Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, Carla K. Johnson in Seattle and Terry Chea in Fairfield, California, contributed to this report.

AKRON, Iowa (AP) — In recent years, Fred Zenk built two barns housing about 2,400 hogs between them — long, white, concrete-and-metal structures that are ubiquitous in the Midwestern countryside.

The Iowa farmer didn’t follow state requirements to get construction approval and file a manure disposal plan. But Zenk’s operation initially flew under the radar of regulators, as have many others across the United States because of loopholes and spotty enforcement of laws intended to keep the nation’s air and water clean.

Beef, chicken and pork have become more affordable staples in the American diet thanks to industry consolidation and the rise of farms with tens of thousands of animals. Yet federal and state environmental agencies often lack basic information such as where they’re located, how many animals they’re raising and how they deal with manure.

The animals and their waste have fouled waters. The enclosures spew air pollutants that promote climate change and are implicated in illnesses such as asthma. The stench of manure — stored in pits beneath barns or open-air lagoons and eventually spread on croplands as fertilizer — can make life miserable for people nearby.

For most of the nation’s history, meat and dairy products came from independent farms that raised animals in barnyards, pastures and rangeland. But the system now is controlled by giant companies that contract with farmers to produce livestock with the efficiency of auto assembly lines inside warehouse-like barns and sprawling feedlots.

The spread of corporate animal farms is turning neighbor against neighbor in town halls and courtrooms. Iowa, the top U.S. producer of swine and egg-laying chickens, has been a major battleground.

“It’s a fight for survival,” said Chris Petersen, who still raises pigs in outdoor pens.

Michele Merkel, a former EPA attorney who quit over the agency’s reluctance to punish polluting mega-farms and is co-director of the advocacy group Food & Water Justice, said the industry “has avoided any effective regulation and accountability for a long time.”

Industry groups say there are plenty of regulations and livestock agriculture is simply adapting to improved technology, equipment and methods.

“We’re responding to what the market is giving us,” said Brady Reicks, whose company runs numerous large hog structures in northeastern Iowa. “We’re doing it responsibly; we’re passionate about doing it. It increases growth in rural Iowa and it helps feed the world.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began to count the nation’s factory farms during the Obama administration but retreated when industry groups sued. Instead, the agency uses state data to produce annual statistics about only the biggest operations.

As of 2018, the nationwide EPA tally was about 20,300 — a roughly five-fold increase over nearly four decades.

Yet it’s a tiny fraction of all confined animal operations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there are more than 450,000, most too small for inclusion in the EPA count.

Iowa has 80 million farm animals and 3 million people. Yet in 2017, regulators didn’t know how many livestock farms were in the state. Under federal pressure, the Department of Natural Resources pored over aerial photos, discovering 4,200 previously unknown facilities.

Zenk’s Plymouth County farm was among them.

“We knew nothing about his operation,” said Sheila Kenny, an environmental specialist with the state agency.

Zenk acknowledged breaking the rules but said no harm was done. He paid a $4,500 fine.

“You think you can get by with something once in a while and you can’t,” he said, strolling among his barns, tractor and feed bins.

To state regulators, such discoveries mean the system works. Critics say the Iowa experience shows how easily livestock operations can escape detection.

Putting thousands of animals in one enclosure produces huge amounts of manure. Unlike human sewage, which is treated and released to waterways, animal waste is stored, then spread on croplands as fertilizer.

Farmers insist they are careful.

“We take soil tests, we decide how much manure it needs and that’s how much we apply,” Reicks said.

Environmental groups say fields often can’t handle the volumes of manure produced, leading to runoff. Such pollution is exempt from regulation under the 1972 Clean Water Act, even though agriculture is the biggest contaminator of rivers and streams, according to the EPA.

In Emmett County, Iowa, small farmer Gordon Garrison sued a nearby operation with 4,400 hogs, contending manure from its croplands fouls a creek that runs through his property and feeds the Des Moines River.

“They’re using me for a waste disposal site,” Garrison said.

Livestock farms generate about 70% of the nation’s ammonia emissions, plus gases that cause global warming, particularly methane.

Yet they aren’t required to get permits under the Clean Air Act. The government hasn’t decided how to measure emissions from barns, feedlots, storage lagoons and croplands.

And under President Donald Trump, EPA has exempted livestock operations from requirements under other laws that industries report significant releases of air pollutants including ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.

Critics say yesteryear’s barnyard whiffs were nothing like the overpowering stench from today’s supersized operations.

“You don’t want to be anywhere near them,” said Brad Trom, a crop producer in Minnesota’s Dodge County, who lives within three miles of 11 structures housing 30,000 swine. He says he’s been staggered by powerful odors barreling across his fields.

Farmers say they’re trying to reduce the smells but contend they’re a normal part of country life.

“I’ve never lived on a farm that didn’t have nature’s fragrances on it,” said Gary Sovereign, a swine producer in Iowa’s Howard County.

Research has linked proximity to factory farms to various health risks. But scientists acknowledge it’s nearly impossible to pin someone’s illness on a certain polluter.

Jeff and Gail Schwartzkopf say after a hog mega-barn was built a quarter-mile from their home in northern Iowa, they developed burning and itching eyes, throat soreness and body rashes. They fear the manure odors are making them sick and ruining their home.

“Nobody’s going to want to buy it. We’re stuck,” Jeff Shwartzkopf said

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Follow Flesher on Twitter: @johnflesher

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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