My city is under a Hypothermia Alert tonight. Again.
As I type this, it's 28˚F in Washington, D.C., at 8:50 p.m. on a Wednesday night. (With the windchill, it's closer to 20˚F.) In ten minutes, the city will switch over to a Cold Emergency Alert until Thursday morning — essentially, it's so dangerously chilly that officials will rove the city in vans all night, picking up homeless people and ordering them into shelters.
In the first 13 days of 2015, my city has already had at least six Hypothermia Alerts and three Cold Emergency Alerts. And judging by this current Weather Channel map, things aren't that much warmer across the nation tonight.
But I'm typing this from a warm room, feet propped up, eating a sandwich. Hundreds of people in my city — and likely hundreds of thousands more across the country — are much less lucky. I was reminded of that when I darted out to grab dinner, and saw a man huddled under a blanket. (He assured me that he had a warm place to go tonight, although I'm not so sure and plan to check on him later.)
I want to help these people. I know I'm not alone. But on a night like this, what can an average citizen do?
Dial a hotline, officials stress.
I wrote on this last year — How To Help The Homeless When It Gets This Cold — and I'd like to share lessons from that article, as well as some of the most common questions I got after writing that piece.
But first, here's a list of hypothermia or homeless assistance hotlines for several major cities, and I plan to update this list through the 2015 winter season. If there's an agency or hotline that you think I should add, please email me at ddiamond.forbes@gmail.com.
- Ann Arbor: 734-961-1999 for Shelter Association of Washtenaw County
- Atlanta: 404-447-3678 for the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless
- Baltimore: 311
- Birmingham, Ala.: 205-252-9571 for the Firehouse Shelter
- Boston: 617‐343‐4911
- Chicago: 311
- Denver: 720-944-1007 for Denver’s Road Home (during business hours) or 311
- Detroit: 1-800-274-3583 and 1-800-343-4427
- Kansas City, MO: 816-474-5112
- Minneapolis: 1-888-234-1329
- New Haven, CT: 211
- New York City: 311
- Philadelphia: 215-232-1984 for the Project HOME Homeless Outreach Hotline
- Pittsburgh: 412-779-1329
- St. Louis: 314-802-5444
- Syracuse: 315-416-9237
- Washington, D.C.: (202) 399-7093 or 211. You can also email uposh@upo.org.
Here's the FAQ on how hypothermia happens, how many people are at risk, and more.
When the temperature falls, how many people are actually in danger?
Anyone who's stuck out in the bitter cold for hours, with insufficient protection, runs the risk of hypothermia, health officials have told me. Essentially, the body will start to shut down its vital functions, causing damage to the brain and heart.
There have been dozens of deaths linked to hypothermia around the country this winter. At least 1,000 people die each year because of it, according to the CDC.
The sheer number of people at risk is tough to pin down, but when Washington, D.C., health officials conducted their annual point-in-time count last January, they discovered about 400 "unsheltered" people out of the city's population of about 8,000 homeless. Keep in mind, that was during a brutal winter, when most homeless already knew to get to shelter.
Nationwide, the number at risk is obviously much larger. One report to Congress found that more than 215,000 people were unsheltered across the United States on a single night in January 2013.
Of course, this isn't just a homeless problem. There are countless others at risk who are too poor to pay their heating bills, or simply have the misfortune of falling down on a cold night and freezing to death, like the sad case of this Pennsylvania woman last week.
What do you do if you see someone suffering?
When it's your friends or neighbors, it's easy: You bring them blankets or invite them in. When it's a random person on the street — it's much harder. City health officials reiterated, when I asked them last week, that many homeless who are willingly on the streets when it gets freezing may be mentally ill, and it's safest to contact a local hotline immediately.
For instance, the 21-year-old homeless man who died from hypothermia in Buffalo last week struggled with schizophrenia, and may not have realized the danger he was in as the windchill dipped to -15˚F.
Are cities better prepared this year?
After last year's brutal cold snap — where in Washington, D.C., officials ran out of space to put people seeking shelter and had to rent motels outside of the city — agencies were much more ready to handle this year's harsh winter.
That readiness manifested in additional resources and strategizing. For example, the DC Interagency Council on Homelessness (a joint government-advocacy coalition) developed a more rigorous modeling tool and fed in comprehensive data on the last three winter seasons. As a result of those projections, the city also secured overflow shelter last fall, which one official told me provided a "much higher level of readiness" than in past years.
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From the archives: