As people were reporting hail or even something closer to snow falling in Anaheim on Wednesday, March 1, a nonprofit planned to line a parking lot with canvas igloos for the night – taking temporary relief directly to where there’s a need.
Wound Walk and the Lestonnac Free Clinic were setting up the waterproof canvas igloos in a parking lot at 1098 N. Euclid St., to offer shelter to as many as 30 unhoused people that congregate in the area of Euclid Street and La Palma Avenue.
“Somebody needs to do something,” said Michael Sean Wright, chief of field operations for Wound Walk, which regularly offers medical care to the homeless. “The cold temperatures will be extreme for the next few days.”
Wright and other advocates for the unhoused set up a similar emergency operation to offer shelter near Beach and Trask boulevards in Westminster on Saturday. They set up igloos that slept four to eight people each.
Along with a warm shelter, they offered 26 people dry clothes, food, hot coffee and medical care, Wright said. “Three presented with extreme hypothermia.”
The county also opened a temporary, nighttime cold weather shelter in a gymnasium in Fullerton’s Independence Park last month. It is being operated by PATH, or People Assisting the Homeless. To get there, though, the homeless must board one of two shuttles, Wright said.
The shuttles depart at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., from either Orangethorpe Avenue and Harbor Boulevard in Fullerton or the FullertonTransportation Center, 303 W. Commonwealth Ave.
The temperature in Anaheim was expected to drop to 39 degrees by 4 a.m. Thursday.
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