BELFAST, Maine — Joyce Sutherland and Carroll Patten of Belfast won’t soon forget the storm two years ago that locked the state in a thick layer of ice and left more than 100,000 Mainers without power.
The duo volunteered to staff the Waldo County emergency shelter at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast, where they spent three days caring for people who needed a warm, safe place to go during the ice storm.
“It was so important, and we enjoyed it,” Patten, 73, said.
“We told the Red Cross, if you need us any other time, let us know. We’ll be there,” Sutherland, 73, added.
Those memories, and the clear need for help, were reasons why Sutherland and Patten went out on a chilly Monday night to the school for a meeting designed to establish an afternoon warming center in Waldo County. The center would serve Belfast-area residents if long-term power outages occur in the wintertime, and organizers are seeking volunteers to help staff the facility.
Dale Rowley, director of the Waldo County Emergency Management Agency, said that the city of Belfast signed a contract with Regional School Unit 71 to locate the warming center at the middle school. There, an auxiliary generator, bathrooms and kitchen facilities will allow folks to come in and charge their cellphones, eat a hot meal, warm up, gather information and enjoy fellowship whenever the Waldo County Emergency Management Agency personnel deem it necessary to open the warming shelter.
Ridgely Fuller of Belfast said she was inspired to organize the warming shelter in Waldo County when she saw Red Cross workers from all over the state come to Belfast for the 2013 storm.
“Why aren’t we doing this?” she said. “Why do we need people from Portland? We can do it for ourselves, can’t we?”
Organizers of the proposed warming center are still ironing out the details and searching for volunteers to work at the facility. Fuller said the goal is to recruit 60 volunteers who will form three teams: one to staff the front desk, another to make sure people feel welcomed and included, and a third to coordinate the hot meal.
Rowley said the warming center will be distinct from an overnight emergency shelter in that it only will be open for a few hours during the day.
He said it is apparent to him that people have become worse prepared for emergencies over the years since the 1998 ice storm that caused widespread power outages that endured for weeks in some part of the state. Back then, more people heated with woodstoves and were perhaps less dependent on electricity, he said.
“In 1998, we were three days into the [outages] before people were saying, ‘We need help,’” he said Monday. “Ten years ago, it was two days. In 2013, it was about two hours.”
Some other Maine communities also run warming centers, which might be open during power outages or on a regular schedule. In Farmington, three churches have taken turns hosting the shelter two days a week from January to the end of March, according to the Rev. Susan Crane of Henderson Memorial Baptist Church. She said that in 2008, her congregation was seeking ways to be more outwardly focused and decided that a warming center was an unmet need in the community. Franklin County Emergency Management Agency Director Tim Hardy told the minister that he was worried people were freezing in their own homes, because they could not afford fuel, Crane recalled Tuesday.
“He said maybe the churches could set this up in their basements and be open for a few hours a day, to give people a place to go and maybe get a hot meal,” she said. “I laughed at him. Do you know how cold we keep the church during the week? It’s set at 56 degrees. But still, we prayed about it.”
Thanks to the Farmington Area Ecumenical Ministry, which initially sponsored the warming center, the project got off the ground in January 2009. It now serves an average of 40 to 50 people per day, who eat homemade soup, do puzzles and crafts and enjoy being warm together, Crane said.
“They love to come. Many are elderly. Many are disabled. They’re people who don’t have anything else to do during the day and they get very isolated in the winter,” she said. “The warming center provides a real social need. One person wrote that they come to the warming center so they have a reason to get out of bed. They don’t usually get out of bed in the winter, so they can stay warm.”
For more information about the Belfast project, visit the Belfast Community Warming Center Facebook page or call Ridgely Fuller at 508-333-6230.