Shelter From The Storm Libby Center Harbors The Sick And The Frustrated, The Young And The Old - Refugees From The Cold
A shimmery winter wonderland holds 120 people captive inside the Libby Center shelter.
Snow rests gently against the center’s tall windows, casting a soft glow on the dimly lit cafeteria. Icicles dangle from roof eaves, glistening in the light.
The holiday scene holds no charm for those trapped inside. Instead, it is a beautiful, silent foe.
“I want to go home so bad,” says a tearful Shannon Mashburn, 26, using a wash cloth Friday night to wipe crumbs from a long, white table. Katie, her 4-year-old daughter, sits a few feet a way, quietly watching a Disney movie with two other small children.
“She should be able to feel like a kid,” says Mashburn. “Not a hostage.”
Mashburn came to Libby - a former middle school in Spokane’s East Central neighborhood - on Wednesday, a day after the region’s worst recorded ice storm stole power from thousands of Inland Northwest residents. Rousted from their apartment by the bone-chilling cold, she and Katie came to the shelter in search of heat and light.
Three days later, Mashburn’s nerves are frayed. She dreads spending yet another night tossing and turning on an Army green stretcher. She prays that morning will bring news she has electricity so she can pack up Katie’s coloring books and “Lion King” blanket and head home.
Mashburn isn’t alone.
Everyone at the American Red Cross shelter - one of seven set up in the county - is exhausted. What they thought would be a one or maybe two-day stay has stretched into four or five.
Many still could be there come Thanksgiving.
While most have grown accustomed to the center’s sour, dirty-sock smell, many say they can’t get used to the constant noise. Humming oxygen tanks. Rustling blankets. Coughs, snores and groans.
More than half the shelter’s residents are elderly. Many need medical care.
Tempers flare occasionally. A woman rolls her wheelchair across the room to scold some toddlers who’ve turned up the volume on “A Goofy Movie.” Another lady shouts at some kids to stop climbing on the bleachers.
For the most part, people do their best to get along.
“The really amazing thing is how little tension there has been, especially with all the coming and going,” says Walt Mabe, 47, a shelter manager.
At 6:30 p.m., about 40 people mill around the cafeteria, watching “Mad About You,” playing cards or reading. A few people finish their dinners, scraping the last of a turkey-and-rice dinner from metal trays.
A volunteer announces the arrival of dessert - a choice of carrot or lemon meringue cake. The news prompts a rush of people, mostly children, craving something sweet.
Mary Ann Myners nibbles on cake, offering up praise for Red Cross volunteers working around the clock to make residents as comfortable as possible.
“One of the nurses was kind enough to take us for medication,” says Myners, who has asthma and arthritis.
Myners lives in the Hifumi En, a low-income apartment complex on East Eighth Avenue. The apartment’s manager forced her and several neighbors to go to the shelter Wednesday, a day after the building lost power.
Myners worries about her cat, Shadowfax, being home alone in a chilled apartment. She visited him earlier in the day when she stopped by for clean clothes.
“He misses me,” she says. “He was twining about my legs.”
Across the room, Tiffany Burton, 14, sits on a cot, playing “Sorry!” with new-found friend, Amanda Collins, 10.
Tiffany and her mom, Coleen Gay, also arrived Wednesday.
“I couldn’t keep the old lady in the house anymore,” says Gay, an in-home caregiver to a 90-year-old woman. “When we got here, the tips of her fingers were so cold, it took a while to thaw them out.”
They brought along plenty to do: games, books, a boom box complete with compact discs: Alanis Morrisette for Tiffany, Reba McEntire for mom.
“I’ve got headsets so I don’t bother anybody,” Gay says.
The pair long for a warm bath or even a cold shower - anything but another splash in the sink.
Most importantly, says Tiffany, “I don’t want to be here Thanksgiving.”
In the gymnasium down the hall from the cafeteria, Joanne Okert is making her way through three rows of cots, tucking in 30 elderly residents from Valley View Senior Home.
The residents have been shuffled three times in four days. After the storm knocked out their electricity, they spent Tuesday night at a Valley shelter. Power came back the next day, and they went home.
Another blackout greeted them Friday morning, forcing them back onto vans for a trip to Libby.
It was easier getting the crew ready the second time, says Patty Baldwin, a Valley View nursing assistant. “Some of them had their coats on, ready to go when we came to get them,” she says. “It was like a fire drill.”
James Smith, 56, doesn’t seem to mind spending life on the run. “I like to travel,” he says with a grin.
Across the gym, an elderly lady wanders from cot to cot, trying to find the one she stayed in the night before. “I want to go to bed,” she moans. “My feet hurt.”
In the last four days, Linda Pitscha has had - maybe - five hours’ sleep.
Pitscha, a registered nurse, arrived at Libby Tuesday night. For much of that time, she’s been the shelter’s lone medical volunteer, taking care of as many as 100 elderly with ailments ranging from congestive heart failure to lung disease.
It’s nearly 8 p.m. Friday, and she’s sending 10 of the more fragile patients to St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute.
“Some of these people are going on their third night,” she says, her own eyes ringed with dark circles. “It’s been very stressful for these people.
“If we can (move them), we’d make them a lot more comfortable. They’ll be able to get through this crisis with a lot less stress.”
Pitscha, a pediatric nurse at Sacred Heart Medical Center, is amazed that many of the shelter’s residents, who are well into their 80s and 90s, normally live alone with minimal assistance.
“I’m just overwhelmed by that,” she says. “I can’t verbalize it. The needs in our community, the needs of the elderly.”
Pitscha’s stamina amazes shelter manager Mabe.
“We wouldn’t have been half as efficient if she wasn’t here,” he says. “She’s not taking care of herself. She’s taking care of everybody else.”
Like many shelter volunteers, Pitscha has her own crises at home, where she, too, has no power. The day of the storm, a black locust tree fell across the top of the house, damaging the roof.
“I’m taking care of that,” says Pitscha’s husband, Tom, who’s stopped by to check on his wife.
Mabe, too, has barely slept since Tuesday. He spends his days ordering supplies and keeping things running, his nights doing body counts and paperwork.
“These people need help. Those of us that can help should,” he says.
It’s partly noise, partly worry that keeps Renee Gould from sleeping.
It’s nearly 9 p.m., and she’s lying on her cot in the gymnasium, watching her 4-year-old daughter Jenee race about the room.
Gould, her mom, three children and a foster son spent the first two nights of the blackout in a hotel.
“I kept hoping (the power) would come back on,” says Gould, who’s looking for work. “We used all our money, all our food stamps. All our food’s rotten.”
“Here comes Thanksgiving, and we’ve got nothing,” she says. “We lost it all.”
About a half hour later, Gould is in the hallway, shielding her 15-year-old foster son from a group of teenagers. Earlier, Gould’s son argued with one of the group’s members outside. The member returned with six tough-looking friends.
Mabe quickly rolls his wheelchair from the office to diffuse the situation. “We’re here to enjoy a nice clean, family experience,” he says, sending the group of teens to the cafeteria to “warm up.”
Gould and her foster son head back to the gymnasium. The teens leave a few minutes later.
By 11 p.m., most shelter residents are defying the constant hum of noise, wrestling with their covers as they try to sleep. In the cafeteria, the credits roll on “Twister.”
Katie Mashburn is asleep, but mom Shannon fidgets and fights with the covers.
Mary Sue Hewankorn and her boyfriend, Boe Miller, await the arrival of a pizza.
Their 3-month-old son, Tristan, rocks gently in his swing.
“He’s disoriented,” says Hewankorn of her son. “The first night was terrible because he didn’t have the swing.”
The pizza arrives. The couple shares the cheese and pepperoni pie with the few people still awake.
About an hour later, all the cafeteria’s lights are out except those in the hallway.
A flashlight flickers across the ceiling. Tristan cries for a moment, before his mom’s soft voice sends him back to sleep.
For most, sleep comes in waves, interrupted by snores, rustling covers or the discomfort of an army stretcher.
An elderly woman cries for her nurse’s aide. “My hip,” she says. “It hurts.”
The hallway sees a stream of people searching for a bathroom or drink of water.
By 7 a.m., a few people have straggled from their cots. Most head for coffee or a sink to wash their face.
Outside the privacy of her small apartment, Ruth Landau didn’t sleep well. “I don’t ever sleep well away from home,” she says. “We’re hoping to hear something today.”
Her friend, Mary Ann Myners, is envious of those who’ve already left. “Everybody else is going home,” says Myners. “We’re still here.”
Dorothy Okawa splashes water on her face in the women’s restroom. Fifty-five years ago, she spent four years in a Japanese internment camp. This, she says, is heaven in comparison.
“It’s so warm in here,” she says. “This is a blessing.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 7 Color Photos
MEMO: (“After the Storm” Special Section, Day Five)