The Board of County Commissioners on Jan. 23 received a briefing from key County leaders who oversee the organization’s winter preparedness and severe weather shelter activation plans.
“The [severe weather shelter activation] program has grown to support our most vulnerable communities and touches almost every department and office, as well as numerous outside organizations,” said Emergency Management Director Chris Voss.
Voss, along with Department of County Human Services Deputy Director Rachel Pearl, discussed the year-round planning work that goes into preparing for severe weather events, the roles key partners play and how the County’s operations unfold when the thresholds for opening severe weather shelters are met.
Chair Jessica Vega Pederson prefaced the briefing by speaking to the cross-jurisdictional partnership between the County and the City of Portland during severe weather events.
While Multnomah County and the City of Portland historically have partnered on severe weather responses, the balance and division of responsibilities have shifted in recent years. Chair Vega Pederson explained that in recognition of the need for good partnership, and in response to Mayor Keith Wilson’s commitment to ensuring the City is the best partner it can be during these adverse events, she has requested the following from the City to meet the needs of our residents:
- The City will assist whenever possible to support transportation needs during severe weather events.
- The City will open staffing recruitment at the same time as the County, so we are prepared and have adequate staffing for these events.
- The City will support availability and permit community centers for emergency shelter use.
“We know that making sure there’s access throughout the City and County for folks is really important, so I expect and look forward to shared commitment, which is really in the spirit of true partnership and coordination,” she said.
The Chair also credited the alignment between the City and the County for the urgent expansion of shelter beds available during the winter season.
“Shelter is the difference between life and death,” she said. “One of the reasons we were able to deliver 200 overnight [winter] shelter beds for people sleeping unsheltered earlier this month in partnership with Mayor Wilson was because of his commitment to ensuring that the City of Portland will be a strong partner in our severe weather response.”
Voss explained that County staff monitor weather conditions and other factors, including severe temperature fluctuations, emergency department visits for hypothermia and wind chill, when determining whether or not to open severe weather shelters.
Officials meet daily to discuss severe weather conditions — consulting with Emergency Management, Health Department, County Human Services and Joint Office experts — and then jointly decide on shelter plans as needed.
Severe weather shelters are opened when any of the following thresholds are met for any one of the conditions below that are forecasted to persist for four hours or more between the hours of 8 p.m. and 7 a.m.:
- Forecasted temperature of 25° F (-4° C) or below.
- Forecasted snow accumulation of 1.0 inch or more.
- Forecasted temperature at or below 32° F (0° C) with driving rain of 1.0 inch or more overnight.
The County’s Chief Operating Officer or their designee may also consider other conditions or circumstances during a severe weather event that could increase the risk to the community to activate a response.
“Even in this case of the past week when we're dealing with a longer cold spell, one of the most important thresholds that we also include is that flexibility piece to consider other circumstances during a severe weather event that could increase that risk to the community,” said Voss.
Voss explained that a significant change put in place over the last year is to plan for staffing beyond the predicted end of weather events.
“In the world of emergency management, we’re often judged on how we followed the plan,” he said. “When it comes to severe weather, it’s just as important to be judged about when we need to alter and be flexible, because the plan doesn't support every type of event we need. That learning process and being flexible is core to our program.”
This change, Voss noted, is a hard-earned lesson from the challenges of a prolonged severe winter event in early 2024. “In the last event, it was not lost on us what the conditions were on the day we closed shelters [compared to what had been forecast]. So just in case we don't see the forecast that the National Weather Service says we're going to have, we have a lot more flexibility in our decision making.”
Two County-owned sites are approved and standing by to be used as emergency shelters during the 2024-25 winter season: Cook Plaza and the Multnomah County East Building, both of which have expanded their capacity. Cook Plaza, which can now serve 150 people (up from 100 people last season), is already fully staged with supplies and could open today if needed.
The County rounds out its emergency shelter capacity through ongoing partnerships with 10 locations, and also can use City-owned community centers and State-owned or leased spaces if needed. Additionally, the County has recently leased, staged and prepared sites in the Hollywood neighborhood, inner Southeast Portland and Northwest Portland that, combined, can serve up to 300 more people.
“We planned for 1,300 and had 1,356 last year — 1,300 is our number, but we can go over that. We can stretch some of these locations,” said Voss. “Our key goal is not to turn anybody away. Even though last year we were losing facilities because of power, losing facilities because of pipe breaks, we didn't turn anyone away, and I'm very proud.”
Pearl said that the County has seen an increase every year in the number of people who utilize the emergency weather shelters. But increasing needs lead to the challenges of increased responsibilities, which has forced the County to begin planning for a shift in its approach to shelter sites.
“We've been moving into wanting large sites,” said Pearl. “We had 14 sites last winter and that's really difficult to manage. Every time we grow in number of sites, we have to have that many more people available to manage those places.”
In addition to having shelter sites already prepared, the County also has:
- Five shelters trailers on standby, able to serve anywhere from 80-to-150-person sites (daytime, overnight and 24/7 use).
- Food and water packages staged for various site capacities.
- Security, transportation and other program support secured.
- A resource request team, along with communications and staffing units, that are prepared and ready to activate.
Joint Office of Homeless Services Deputy Director Anna Plumb spoke about the enhanced outreach program the Joint Office activates when conditions approach, but don’t yet meet, activation thresholds. Enhanced outreach includes additional and coordinated work to find vulnerable people living outside and distribute cold weather gear and information about resources. Thresholds for activating enhanced outreach include:
- Forecasted temperatures of 32° F (0° C) or below, without precipitation.
- Forecasted windchills of 25° F (-4° C) or below, without precipitation.
- Forecasted temperatures of 34° F (1° C) or below, alongside precipitation of more than one tenth of an inch.
“Our supply center and outreach coordinator kick into high gear,” Plumb said. “We separate the county into 37 zones and we’ll do about 28 appointments per day when we anticipate severe weather. We assign outreach workers to all those zones and they come and pick up warming supplies and get them out across the County.”
The latest information on emergency shelters, enhanced street outreach and volunteer opportunities, along with tips and resources for staying safe during the winter months can be found at the County’s Care for When It’s Cold page (multco.us/cold).
Board comment
“I appreciate that after last year there was a significant after-action assessment on what worked well and what didn't, and that you've integrated some of the system improvements in your plans going forward,” said Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards. “I want to recognize the County staff who went above and beyond, even when they maybe didn't have power at their houses. They were at the shelters working.”
Commissioner Vince Jones-Dixon, who represents East Multnomah County, shared that was interested in the plan for his district, “specifically with the five cities, and how can we be intentional about being prepared about leveraging the work that you’re already doing, which is great. I personally experienced the work over the last two years volunteering with Cultivate Initiatives and the great staff of Multnomah County at the warming shelters.”
Commissioner Meghan Moyer asked how the County developed the temperature threshold of 25° F or colder for opening warming shelters, which differ from those of neighboring counties. “But what would be the ramifications of adjusting our temperature threshold?” she asked.
Voss explained that he and his team work with the Health Department every other year to review emergency department (ED) and ambulance transport data to evaluate risk.
“One of the reasons we landed on 25° F is that when you start looking at the graphs for ED visits and ambulance transports, an interesting thing happens around 25° F, which is when you see a curve — that sometimes is gradual — really start to skyrocket, where we start to see a significant number of increases.
Voss also explained that going from 15 days of severe weather shelter activation per year based on current thresholds to possibly 30 or 40 days as the result of adjusted thresholds would greatly impact the 600 County staff who may have to leave their everyday work to support shelter operations. Increased activations could also mean changes in scheduled programming at a library or cancelling City programs at community centers that are geared toward underserved communities to use their facility as a shelter.
“We want to make sure we're there during the highest-risk days,” he said. “The highest-risk days are not sometimes just days with elevated risk. The impact also has ripple effects. It’s about understanding the risk and how that risk changes with temperature.”
Commissioner Shannon Singleton shared her appreciation, which comes from a unique familiarity with the local governmental response to severe weather.
“As somebody who used to run severe weather shelters when it was actually run by the City — and it was me and a couple of people deciding if it should open — we’ve come a long way,” she said. “I want people to understand the evolution of this program from a couple shelters opening when we could kind of staff it and had the money for it, to a really robust system and response now that the County has stepped in and really started to lead this effort. I want to appreciate the work that I know you all do and your teams and how many people go into putting this work together.”
“Time and time again, our employees step up when it comes to the work that’s needed for severe weather,” said Chair Vega Pederson. “We have conducted several severe weather after-actions in recent years that have resulted in robust support for this community. We work across many departments to close every gap and will continue to do so should an event be in our future.”
