The Multnomah County medical examiner is investigating four suspected hypothermia deaths in Portland, after temperatures dropped well below freezing starting Jan.12. Local hospitals also reported 67 cold-related illnesses, including hypothermia and frostbite, highlighting the risks associated with exposure to cold weather.
Details on the deaths are sparse, and the medical examiner could take several weeks or months to complete the investigation, according to the county. Critics say the emergency response from local leaders, which expired before the dangerous weather passed, helped early on but ultimately left vulnerable residents at unnecessary risk.
The city of Portland introduced demands to its agreement with the county, changing its role in emergency response on Jan. 9. While the county said its response was similar to neighboring counties, it noted the city's demands — including an unmet demand for armed security at warming shelters — significantly impacted staff levels and ultimately, the city and county's ability to respond.
Jessica Vega Pederson, Multnomah County chair, declared a state of emergency on Jan. 12, quickly opening six shelters and increasing to a dozen shelters by Jan. 14 — the most ever opened by the county. During the February 2023 cold weather emergency, the county opened eight shelters. This year, shelters accommodated over 1,100 people three nights in a row, including a record total of 1,269 people at its peak on the night of Jan. 16.
Emergency shelters play a significant role in the county's approach to temporary shelter, as the number of shelter beds on any given night is well below the need. On a given day, Multnomah County and the city have nearly 2,700 shelter units available – enough for just 39% of the 6,300 homeless Multnomah County residents counted in the 2023 Point-in-Time Count, which is widely believed to be a substantial undercount.
Still, emergency shelters closed as planned at noon Wednesday, Jan. 17, despite temperatures remaining slightly above freezing and forecasts of freezing rain for the following days. Critics say Multnomah County's decision to close shelters before temperatures rose and melted the ice overshadowed an otherwise functional response.
The county said it decided to close shelters based on a 90% certain forecast provided by the National Weather Service on Jan. 16.
"After five days of 24-hour shelter, when that 10% possibility came to pass, and with temperatures still above thresholds, it was too late to reverse course," Julia Comnes, Joint Office of Homeless Services communications coordinator, said.
Asked what the downside would have been in keeping shelters open until the ice melted, Julie Sullivan-Springhetti, Multnomah County communications director, said it was impossible to reopen shelters due to a lack of staff and volunteers to fill 350 daily shifts. While shelters were open, more than 1,000 county workers filled 69% of shifts, while local service providers, volunteers and state and city employees covered the remaining shifts.
The city of Portland typically provides staff, but the Jan. 9 agreement left gaps in the city's role in emergency response. The lack of city staff, Portland Street Response staff and transportation to shelters were a factor in the shelters closing at noon Jan. 17, despite worsening conditions, according to Sullivan-Springhetti.
"It's clear this community can't afford to have large government partners not... stepping up together in equal measure,” she said. "But we can't be throwing stones at each other. We need to be working together instead.”
In a joint statement issued Jan. 25, Vega Pederson and Mayor Ted Wheeler said, “We are committed to working together to improve the way we serve all residents of Portland and Multnomah County, particularly those living on our streets.”
Multnomah County reported a record-breaking number of emergency calls and emergency room visits for injuries due to dangerous weather conditions throughout the week. The day emergency shelters closed, the county reported 566 calls for medical emergencies alone — the highest number since the heat dome event in June 2021. At the peak of the storm, the Bureau of Emergency Communications reported answering 300 calls per hour, according to the joint statement.
Tamara Knapper, a Street Roots vendor, said she had to walk for an hour and a half on icy sidewalks after missing a bus to get home. At one point, she had to crawl up a hill through a park because the sidewalks were too icy to walk on her feet.
"It was a tiresome day," she said.
Another Street Roots vendor, Sean Tuttle, said he found it safer to walk in the streets because the city did not maintain the sidewalks as attentively as the roads. Tuttle fell at one point and injured his arm, and he was particularly concerned for people with disabilities who depend on sidewalks to use mobility devices safely.
"That's dangerous for someone with a wheelchair because they're gonna hit harder if it actually tumbles over," he said.
Comnes said the challenge to provide services for the storm's duration wasn't something Multnomah County faced alone, as adjacent Washington County also closed shelters during the same period Jan. 17. Counties across the state struggled to provide sufficient emergency services to homeless residents and those suddenly displaced by the storm.
Helping neighbors
Charlotte Helmer, a volunteer at Springfield's only emergency shelter, Egan Warming Center, said the ice storm also hit Lane County hard. She said emergency managers at the city and county had no plan for providing emergency shelter, transportation, medical aid or other lifesaving support for homeless residents during the emergency, and communities need to be better prepared for extreme weather events in the near future.
"We need to work together as a community, statewide, to build more resilient shelters and to understand that this is as important as being ready to restore power," Helmer said.
At times the shelter only had four volunteers on overnight shifts to care for 150 guests, and some volunteers worked up to 16 hours a day, according to Helmer.
Three volunteers who worked the dinner shift at Egan Warming Center on the first night of the storm went home only to find a tree had fallen on their house, and they had no power, Helmer said.
"They turned around, they came back to the warming center, and they checked in as guests," Helmer said.
The volunteers-turned-guests stayed at the shelter until the storm passed days later.
"That is just the reality of how close all of us are to needing shelter," Helmer said.
As the shelter was scheduled to close and volunteers started telling guests they needed to leave, Helmer said organizers decided they could not bring themselves to endanger people with nowhere to go.
"It's too dangerous out there," she told guests. "So, we're going to stay open. But we don't have a plan."
A coalition of volunteers, including Helmer, provided public comment on Jan. 23 to Lane County officials to share concerns and hold leaders accountable for inaction. Helmer told Street Roots that Egan Warming Center is generally a "sticks and chewing gum operation," and volunteers said in public testimony the organization can't feasibly provide enough resources to people in need without the help of local leadership.
"We called for backup," Helmer said. "We really needed people to come staff the shelter immediately, or we needed transportation for our people to some other safe place, and no help came."
Lane County hospitals reported treating cold-related illnesses for 21 people. At least four were believed to be homeless residents, according to Jason Davis, Lane County public information officer.
"It just reminds us of the importance of making sure that you're able to hit the ground running on some of these responses," Davis said.
The Oregon Department of Forestry's incident management team deployed to Lane County late in the week to assist with recovery from the ice storm, the day after Gov. Tina Kotek declared a statewide emergency Jan. 18.
"The forestry work we do every day is critically important to Oregonians and their natural resources, but we find ourselves involved with emergency response and management more and more," Cal Mukumoto, Oregon’s Department of Forestry director, said.
Changing climate
Erica Fleishman, Oregon Climate Change Research Institute director and Oregon State University professor, said despite the accuracy of forecasting the overall event, extreme cold weather events in the Willamette Valley are difficult to forecast in real time.
Simply put, freezing rain happens when cold air is close to the surface while warmer air rests above. If the warmer air carries precipitation, rain falls and freezes once it hits the colder area. If the air were cold above and below, the precipitation would be snow rather than freezing rain.
As the earth warms, cold weather events will continue to be less common, while extreme heat events will become more frequent, according to Fleishman.
"Part of the reason that they can have some pretty strongly negative effects is because people are not as accustomed to them as they used to be," Fleishman said. "Emergency response mechanisms aren't necessarily as familiar with them. Whenever anything becomes less common, our ability to respond is reduced."
While the suspected hypothermia deaths are still being investigated and are not known to be homeless county residents, deaths among homeless residents due to extreme weather are not unfamiliar locally. One homeless resident died due to extreme heat in July 2022. Another homeless resident died due to extreme cold in November and another in December 2022, according to the most recent Multnomah County Domicile Unknown report.
Comnes said after each emergency activation, the county conducts an after-action reporting process to determine what it needs to reevaluate to improve response to the next event.
"The county takes lessons from every event and uses them to continuously get better," Comnes said.
Helmer said every community in Oregon needs to come together to prioritize emergency readiness to avoid chaotic responses in the future.
"It can't wait till next winter because we will have fires, and we will have smoke, we will have earthquakes," she said. "So, it has to be a priority, and it can't be forgotten just because the ice is melting."
Fleishman said despite hypotheses that rapid global warming destabilizes air patterns associated with the polar vortex, the science is not yet settled on whether cold events in the northern U.S. are increasingly common during winter, and more research is needed. However, the scientific consensus is that global heat emergencies will happen more frequently, and cold emergencies will become less frequent over time.
"The fact that a cold event happens is not inconsistent with climate change," Fleishman said.
Still, she said it is imperative to invest in emergency response systems for future weather events, many of which are impacted by the very event they are responding to.
"Adaptation is necessary, regardless of the success of mitigation efforts," she said. "Even if emissions went to zero today, it would still be several decades before the climate stopped warming."
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