Cooling center open Thursday due to extreme heat forecast
Written by Patrick Schneider on September 4, 2024
Roseburg, Ore. — Volunteers partnering with St. George Episcopal Church plan to open a cooling center in downtown Roseburg on Thursday, Sept. 5.
A cooling center will open at 3 p.m. in the meeting hall at the church, 1024 SE Cass Ave., and close at about 8 p.m.
The center will offer water, seating and small snacks, said volunteer cooling center organizer Jacob Schlueter, who arranged to use the church’s facilities.
“Just bare bones,” he said.
The cooling center would welcome donations of water and ice starting at 2 p.m. Thursday at the church. There will be greeters. Anyone who’d like to volunteer should email jacob.schlueter@gmail.com.
“We’re always open to volunteers,” added Schlueter, who said he and his wife will buy anything else that’s needed.
The cooling center may be open Friday night as well if the forecast increases to 102 degrees Fahrenheit, Schlueter said.
The church space has been inspected and approved by the Roseburg Fire Department for use as a severe event shelter, said Schlueter, who works as the shelter program manager for United Community Action Network.
However, a cooling center is not a UCAN project this summer.
Under Roseburg’s severe event shelter policy adopted by the City Council in 2020, the summer weather conditions that trigger opening a cooling center are temperatures of 102 degrees Fahrenheit or more; a forecast of 95 degrees Fahrenheit or more, plus other conditions that would reasonably cause a person to be at increased risk of exposure to heat, including precipitation, humidity, wind, overall weather patterns or the duration and potential for cumulative effects (such as hours per day or consecutive days); and a very unhealthy air quality index value of at least 201.
