Cold snap, winds keep shelters busy
Things were busy enough Friday at the House of Charity without having to clean up a couple of hundred gallons of water sprayed inside the shelter when a sprinkler pipe froze and then burst.
It was part of long night for a shelter staff working hard to make sure Spokane’s homeless had a warm place to spend the bitterly cold night. The shelter took in an extra 25 guests as temperatures dropped to 3 degrees and winds gusted to more than 30 mph just before dawn Friday.
Several hundred homeless people, mostly men, crowded together for the charity’s free lunch Friday as bitter arctic winds continued to howl outside. Wind chills dropped to minus-20 degrees overnight Thursday and continued to stay around zero even with the sun shining Friday morning.
The arctic cold is expected to hold its grip across the region today and then ease some through the remainder of the Presidents Day holiday weekend. A slight chance of snow is predicted for Monday, with a greater chance again on Wednesday. Below-normal temperatures are forecast through next week.
Shelter officials on Thursday activated a new emergency system, in which designated shelters are allowed to exceed their maximum capacity. Called warming centers, they can be opened when the forecast calls for lows of 5 degrees or colder.
“We’re all working together to make sure there isn’t anybody on the streets,” said Rusty Barnett, program manager at the Hope House shelter for women.
Hope House has beds for 34 women but housed 35 on Thursday night, putting one guest on a couch, he said. Another woman had to be taxied to Truth Ministries shelter, she said.
An elderly homeless man, who identified himself only as Richard, said his legs got pretty cold sleeping under a bridge Thursday night. By Friday morning, he was at the House of Charity warming up and eating lunch.
“I can pretty much sleep outside zero degrees, if the wind ain’t blowing,” Richard said. He hoped to sleep at the House of Charity on Friday night if he could make it there by the time the shelter closes its doors for incoming guests at 8:30 p.m.
At the House of Charity, all of the shelter’s 108 beds were full, so Director Ed McCarron opened the downstairs and handed out pillows and blankets to drop-ins who slept on benches or the floor.
Things were hopping as well at the Truth Ministries homeless shelter on East Sprague, as police, a hospital and another shelter brought in people whose lives might have been endangered if they had to sleep outside.
“At 8 p.m. our waiting room was completely full,” said Marty McKinney, director of Truth Ministries. He said the shelter put people on couches to accommodate 56 guests, eight more than there are beds. “We’ll get a few more tonight.”
At the Crosswalk center, kids have been stopping by for something to eat or to pick up gloves and hats, said program director Lonnie Keesee.
“We have not seen a substantial increase in the amount of kids staying in our overnight shelter, but we have seen probably a 10 to 15 percent increase in the number of kids stopping by our drop-in center.”
The combination of single-digit temperatures and continuing winds forecast for this morning was expected to produce wind chills of 15 degrees below zero today, before temperatures increase to a high in the lower 20s.
“We are going to moderate some, but we are expecting to stay below normal through all of next week,” said Todd Lericos, forecaster for the National Weather Service in Spokane.
The winds that kicked up just before sundown on Thursday reached 30 mph or more across the region throughout Friday morning. A peak gust of 39 mph was measured at Fairchild Air Force Base before 11 a.m. Top gusts of 36 mph were clocked at the airports in both Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.
Friday morning’s low of 3 degrees was 8 degrees shy of the all-time record in Spokane of minus 5 degrees for Feb. 17 set in 1881. Normal temperatures are 40 degrees for a high and 26 degrees for a low.
In Spokane Valley, burst pipes left a popular restaurant flooded. Jibo Zhuo, owner of the Hong Kong Café at 14720 E Sprague Ave., arrived Friday morning to find 3 inches of water in his restaurant’s dining area. “Right now I’m trying to heat up,” Zhuo said.
Friday morning winds were blamed for a series of power failures across the region, most of them caused by trees or limbs falling onto power lines.
Avista Utilities reported that 1,200 customers were without power for about four hours from 2:18 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. Friday. A downed wire in Davenport in Lincoln County cut power to 100 customers there, and another 600 lost power in Grangeville, Idaho.
Inland Power and Light Co. said its crews were hustling to keep up with numerous scattered outages.
The cold also took its toll on vehicles.
Dave Johnson, operations manager at Nelson’s towing and auto repair on North Francis Avenue in Spokane, said his three trucks were hurrying to calls and there was a waiting list for help. Most of the problems involved dead batteries, he said.
“The cold definitely wreaks havoc on cars,” he said.