BUCKHANNON – The Upshur County Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management urges community members to reach out to its main office if they need overnight shelter during the ongoing, harsh winter weather.
The main office may be reached by calling 304-472-4983 or emailing DHSEM at dhsem@upshurcounty.org.
Amid Winter Storm Blair and its below-freezing temperatures, Upshur DHSEM Director Steve Wykoff explained the difference between a comfort station/warming station and a shelter. These carry different requirements that residents may not be aware of.
“Warming stations are temporary places where somebody can go in, get warm, charge a cell phone, potentially get something warm to eat or drink, depending on the situation, whereas shelters are designed for overnight stays,” Wykoff said.
To establish a shelter, certain requirements must be met.
“With shelters, you have to meet a pretty rigorous standard; there has to be a set number of volunteers available, both male and female,” Wykoff said. “There have to be male and female bathrooms; there have to be male and female shower facilities; there has to be a backup generator; there has to be a full-size commercial kitchen available.
“It’s very, very difficult to find anything like that in Upshur County,” he said.
Wykoff said his office has all the supplies for warming stations, cooling stations, and shelters, but they lack locations to set up.
“Our agency relies tremendously on the good-heartedness and philanthropy of our community members in regard to warming stations and shelters, so we reach out to places like churches and things along those lines,” Wykoff said.
Time is also a challenge.
“When we have incidents that are outside of normal business hours, it becomes very difficult for me to get a hold of anybody outside of normal business hours, and we all know that you can’t plan when an incident happens, so I try to set things up ahead of time, but recently, I’ve been receiving a lot of negative responses in regards to my requests,” he said.
DHSEM does not open the stations in advance because they don’t know where the greatest need will be in the county.
“It doesn’t make any sense to open a warming shelter at Banks District Fire Department if Hodgesville is the location that has a power outage, for example, so that’s one of the reasons I wait on requests, and I’m a little bit more reactive in regard to that than I am proactive,” Wykoff said. “Additionally, we want to make sure that the effort that we put out is used as well, so we want to make sure food people are donating gets utilized because if no one shows up, we have to throw out all the food that was donated to us.”
If donations are not successfully distributed as intended, contributing organizations may be more hesitant to donate in the future.
“Then, if something like that happens, those businesses don’t want to donate anymore because they’re not sure they’re actually helping people, and it’s just a vicious cycle,” Wykoff said.
Each center also requires at least four volunteers, which is not always easy to find.
“I have no issue setting up the stations; if somebody comes to me with a location, I will,” Wykoff said. “I would like to go on record and say that we have had multiple requests for overnight assistance and [other types of assistance], and we have not had to turn anyone away. It may not hit the news that we have a warming station open, but the public needs to know that we are still taking care of these people to make sure the ones that are requesting assistance are receiving that assistance.”
Wykoff said DHSEM does the best it can to conserve its resources, which can be challenging when setting up a warming station.
“Last Friday, we had a request come in for about six people that would need a warming station, so we went through, and I called about a dozen places and finally got a response from Cornerstone Church down in Tennerton, but the people that were requesting the assistance were in the city, and they had no transportation,” Wykoff said. “Cornerstone was kind enough to utilize personal vehicles to go and get these six individuals, so they chose a designated spot for everybody to meet them.”
“They drove the vehicle into town, picked them up and brought them back to the warming station. Of those six people who requested assistance, only one of them showed up, so at this warming station, we had probably about half a dozen people ready to help out if need be, and then we had food these individuals purchased out of their own pocket for six to 12 people, and only one person showed up.”
The individual stayed in the shelter for several hours; after he left, Wykoff said Upshur DHSEM waited for an hour after the person left, but no one else showed up.
People searching for assistance may call the DHSEM at 304-472-4983.