7,161 Homeless Jam Public Facilities in New York : Record Number Flock to Shelters in Cold

Bitter cold in the Northeast sent record numbers of homeless persons to shelters Friday as freezing temperatures stung the Midwest, where many areas struggled with huge ice jams and flooding.

“It was literally wall-to-wall people in here last night,” Roy Morrison, program coordinator for Boston’s 350-bed Pine Street Inn shelter, said Friday. The shelter housed 300 persons above its designed capacity. “We’re stretching things as far as we can right now,” Morrison said.

Officials in parts of the Northeast said the number of homeless seeking shelter was the highest since the Great Depression.

New York City’s public shelters bulged with 7,161 persons, officials said Friday, the fourth day in a row that they held more than 7,000. Private shelters accommodated about 1,500 more.

One man who refused shelter was found frozen to death Wednesday night in New Jersey.

Hot Air Ducts Fall Short

“This weather is brutal. Even the gratings, I don’t think, offer much warmth,” said Jack Deacy, a spokesman for New York City’s Human Resources Administration, referring to hot air ducts in city sidewalks where the homeless huddle.

As the snowy front whitened cities from Portland, Me., to Washington and dropped daybreak temperatures Friday to 5 below zero in Burlington, Vt., thousands who normally live on the streets overflowed shelters.

The cold blast, which dropped the mercury at Miles City, Mont., to 21 degrees below zero early Friday, refrigerated a swath stretching to the Texas Panhandle, where highs in the 20s were expected. It was 19 degrees early Friday in Amarillo, Tex.

Moist air moving up from the Gulf of Mexico and colliding with the cold was expected to create 2 to 4 inches of snow in the western half of Texas. “This developing storm may well turn out to be the worst for West Texas so far this winter,” said meteorologist Alfonso Castaneda.

The mercury dropped below zero in many parts of the northern Plains, and officials blamed river ice problems on recent shifts between warm and cold weather. In Nebraska, ice jamming in the Platte and Loup rivers restricted flows and caused lowland flooding.

Nebraskans Win Sympathy

“There really isn’t anything anyone can do other than sympathize,” said J. Michael Jess, director of the Nebraska Department of Water Resources. “I’m sure the people along rivers wish that were good enough. I know it is not.”

There were ice jams on the Minnesota River at Granite Falls, Minn., on the Wisconsin at Portage, Wis., and on the Mississippi at Monticello, Minn., the weather service said. Barge traffic on the Upper Mississippi has been curtailed since the end of the shipping season Nov. 30.

Ice on the Illinois River near Peoria was causing no problems, the Coast Guard said.

The weather service called for snow from the Great Lakes to the northern and middle Atlantic states and New England, with scattered snowfall from eastern Idaho through the central Rockies and the southern Plains.

Snowfall depths by early afternoon included more than 4 inches in Atlantic City, N.J., and Altoona, Pa., and 2 inches in Chicago.

12 Deaths Reported

The storm and freeze have been blamed for at least 12 deaths in traffic accidents since Tuesday: one in Colorado, one in Ohio and four in Kansas, two in Michigan and one in Virginia, and three in Pennsylvania.

Fog and freezing rain caused a rash of accidents on slick roads Friday around Boise, Ida. Fourteen tow trucks and several ambulances were dispatched to Interstate 84, where 20 cars and a tractor-trailer collided. Police said several persons were injured.

In Michigan, officials completed a report Friday setting damages at nearly $50 million from a New Year’s Eve ice storm, the state’s worst since 1976. Officials set a meeting with Gov. James J. Blanchard to request federal disaster assistance to recover from the storm, which blacked out more than 420,000 utility customers and was blamed for two deaths.