Advocates across the city are working to make sure the homeless in Dallas have a warm place to wait out the storm. They say they’re more prepared than they were last year.
Most homeless people in need of shelter during the storm last year were directed to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center where 200 to 400 cots were available. This year, though, the city opened the Automobile Building in Fair Park as a temporary inclement weather shelter, which will be able to hold up to 1,000 homeless people during the storm.
Wayne Walker, CEO of the nonprofit OurCalling, said they’ve been preparing for harsh weather like this ever since the storm last year. He suspects their response to the cold weather will run more smoothly this time around.
The city will provide COVID-19 tests for people trying to enter the Fair Park shelter. Those who test positive will be taken to a different shelter to quarantine. The Oak Lawn United Methodist Church will be providing rides to the Fair Park shelter every night starting at 5 p.m. The rides will run at least through Sunday. The church said people should come before 8 p.m.
Dallas also opened temporary inclement weather shelters when temperatures dropped last month. Between Jan. 1 and Jan. 22, those shelters were responsible for over 2,000 stays, according a Jan. 28 memo from the city.
Other groups in North Texas are also pooling resources to help the homeless during the storm.
According to Vice News, a Portland-based collective called HeaterBloc put out an open-source guide for building tent-safe, alcohol based heaters for the homeless. They only cost about seven bucks to make and can be used for cooking or warming small indoor spaces for hours at a time.
The guide was translated into several languages and distributed to groups in rural areas and major cities across the country, including Dallas, according to Vice.
One Dallas group raising money for resources and making these DIY space heaters is the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club.
“Heater-Bloc formed like Voltron all night to bust out another two dozen heaters,” the group said in a Twitter post on Wednesday. “They'll be distributed this afternoon and that will put the count of heaters given out in the last three days to about 100.”
Another group called DFW Mutual Aid is passing around a volunteer form for anyone who wants to help provide resources for the homeless over the next few days."This well-organized operation has provided shelter for our unsheltered neighbors last week and is prepared to do so again." – Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, city of Dallas
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According to the medical journal The Lancet, nearly 5 million people died around the world due to cold conditions between 2000 and 2019.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which runs the state’s power grid, issued a winter weather watch on Wednesday that is set to last until Sunday. The council said it projects it will have enough power generation to meet the high demand for electricity in the coming days.
“ERCOT is using all the tools available to manage the grid effectively during this winter weather,” Interim CEO Brad Jones said in a press release. “ERCOT will deploy all the resources and aggressively implement the tools available to us to manage the grid reliably during this winter weather.”
But the door was left open for potential power outages.
“While grid conditions remain strong with enough capacity, our weather forecasts show there is potential for significant frozen precipitation behind this week’s cold front,” Jones said. “With frozen precipitation there is always a chance for local outages caused by things like ice on wires or fallen tree limbs. These local outages are not related to the amount of available electricity generated and put on the grid.”
In the event of such outages, the city of Dallas opened warming shelters at 43 rec centers and 29 libraries.
Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, the Dallas' chief of staff, said in the city memo, "Through a tremendous amount of preparation and planning, this well-organized operation has provided shelter for our unsheltered neighbors last week and is prepared to do so again."
