Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and homeless advocates are preparing for bitter temperatures and advising unsheltered individuals to seek shelter when possible as the chill sets in.
The five deaths prompted an emergency declaration from Mayor Mendenhall, South Salt Lake Mayor Cherie Wood and Millcreek Mayor Jeff Silvestrini to increase capacity at area shelters.
"Service providers around the state offer various shelter and housing service for those in need during these cold winter months. For those in Salt Lake County, call 801-990-9999 to access emergency shelter. For other parts of the state, call 211 to find services in your area. With overnight temperatures well below freezing, I encourage anyone who is sleeping in a tent or in a vehicle to take advantage of shelter options.
"Friends, we're facing a really scary combo tonight. It will be 15 degrees with 50 mph winds," Wendy Garvin, executive director of Unsheltered Utah, wrote in a"We're doing an emergency run tonight to get tents, sleeping bags, candles and Sterno. We could really use your help with dollars to support this. We'd like to clean out every low-priced tent in the valley to ensure folks' safety.
"Some weren't allowed in shelters, others aren't willing to go due to being separated as couples, or having pets. That puts them out in terrible temperatures," Garvin said. "The way transportation is set up, the shelters often don't know when they have free beds until midnight — by then, folks have made plans to stay in tents because it's been brutally cold for hours.
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