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Cold Grips Eastern, Plains States; Shelters for Homeless Overflowing

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From Times Wire Services

Bitter cold gripped the East and northern plains on Wednesday, touching off frantic efforts to find enough shelter space for homeless people.

Temperatures fell to single-digit readings in the Northeast and into the teens and single digits in the northern plains, the National Weather Service reported. Freezing conditions stretched as far south as northern Florida.

Overnight lows ranged from 3 degrees in Boston and 1 degree at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Conn., to 33 degrees below zero atop 6,288-foot Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, weather officials said.

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Blowing snow was reported throughout the Dakotas and in Montana and Wyoming.

Suzanne Trazoff of the Human Resources Administration in New York City said that more than 9,900 people took refuge from the cold overnight in 23 shelters. The temperature in New York City dipped to 8 degrees Wednesday morning.

Shelters for the homeless in Boston and in several Connecticut cities were filled, and authorities scrambled to find space for those without a place to stay.

“This is a night you could easily freeze to death,” John Ferrucci, assistant director of the 85-bed South Park Inn in Hartford, Conn., said Tuesday night.

One shelter in Hoboken, N.J., has been taking in more people than its legal capacity. “We have a different plan when it’s this cold,” said the Rev. Geoffrey Curtiss at the Shelter for the Homeless. “When it’s this cold, we allow (the shelter) to overflow.”

A shelter in Washington, D.C., run by the Community for Creative Non-Violence, which is under renovation and can house nearly 600 people, had to turn people away, staff worker Brian Anders said.

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