PORTLAND, Ore. — As ice coats the streets of Portland, homeless people make paths out of cardboard to get around. Many in Old Town Wednesday morning had just left warming centers, which closed earlier in the day.
“They just said it was time to go and kicked us out,” said one man, who goes by the street name ‘Knives.’ “So, I had the idea to come here and light things on fire,” Knives continued, referring to the wooden pallets he was burning on the sidewalk to help him and his friends stay warm.
“If they could’ve just let us stay for the rest of the day until the snow melted, that would have been ideal,” his friend, Casey, said of the warming centers.
Multnomah County opened a record number of warming centers since Friday. They were scheduled to close at 8 a.m. Wednesday, but given the weather, some were kept open until noon.
Homeless people left the emergency shelters with new supplies like tents, sleeping bags and a tarp — yet those supplies only go so far given the new, stricter policies around homeless camping in Portland.
“Quite literally, it’s illegal to camp, so what’s the point? Every time I have a tent, it gets stolen anyway,” said one homeless man who was packing up his supplies.
Since Friday, four people died in Portland from suspected hypothermia, including one woman who spent time at Blanchet House, a popular day center for homeless people in Old Town. Another person died from suspected hypothermia while inside their Tigard home.
“I don’t even know what to say to that somebody dying because they’re freezing to death; that’s kind of scary,” said Marcel who’s homeless in Old Town but was able to make it to a warming center over the weekend.
In Northeast Portland, a church caught fire early Sunday. Two pastors who lived there died. Reggie, a homeless man who often stayed there, tried to save them.
“For a while, I thought these hands were strong, but they failed when the time came. We couldn’t get to them fast enough,” he said, fighting back tears, hands covered in burns and blisters. “I had to tear the building apart with my bare hands. I couldn’t do it.”
Portland Fire and Rescue has not confirmed the cause of that fire, but there are talks of it starting from a generator. The fire department said to KGW that they aren’t ruling out the possibility of the cause being weather-related.
As the storm’s aftermath makes life outside that much harder, just making it through the night is a fear shared by far too many.
“I mean, people are all still cold and hypothermic from before; it’s going to be ongoing,” Casey said.
Two other people died during the storm: An elderly man in Lake Oswego after a tree fell on his home and hit him while he was sleeping, as well as one person living in an RV in Southeast Portland; he died after a tree fell on that RV and caused a fire.