In the News - 7/11/2024
The Spokesman Review
‘That guy is not OK’: Las Vegas nonprofit helps homeless during extreme heat
A man with dark sores covering his face limped along the side of Mountain Vista Street in the triple-digit heat Tuesday.
“Hold on. We gotta do something real quick. That guy is not OK,” said Louis Lacey, director of HELP of Southern Nevada, as he made a U-turn and pulled over on the Las Vegas street.
After handing the man a bottle of water, Lacey quickly called in the rest of the HELP team members, who helped the man get to the Jack in the Box down the road, where he was scheduled to meet people.
Ideally, Lacey said, he would have liked to help the man access services, but he knows he cannot force people to do so.
“We’re only doing one thing today, and that is making sure that people are receiving lifesaving services,” he told a Review-Journal reporter and a photographer during a ride-along with Lacey.
He and around five team members from HELP – a nonprofit dedicated to helping people access programming and assistance – drove to different homeless encampments from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, handing out water and hygiene products and calling for medical aid when needed, just as they do every time the temperature exceeds 110 degrees.
The team also handed out flyers with information on cooling centers, and helped take people to the centers or shelters. On Tuesday morning at 10:30 a.m., the temperature had already exceeded 105 degrees.
By late Tuesday afternoon, it reached 119, just one degree shy of the valley’s all-time high of 120 degrees, a record set Sunday.As heat reaches record highs, the number of unhoused people in Clark County also has soared. The population has increased by more than 1,300 in the past year alone, with at least 7,928 recorded during the January point-in-time count compared with 6,566 counted in 2023.
KHQ
Meals on Wheels giving fans to seniors during heatwave
Tradition continued in Spokane County this week as Greater Spokane County Meals on Wheels handed out free fans to the elderly population amid eastern Washington’s record-breaking heat wave.
The need is great across the Inland Northwest to find ways to cool down as temperatures surpass 100 degrees, and a lot of the time, during heat waves, that need is even greater for older people who often don’t have the resources to help themselves.
Jeremiah Keevy, the development director for Greater Spokane County Meals on Wheels, gave out fans to folks visiting the Spokane Valley Senior Center on Monday.
"What the drive is all about is about getting cooling needs out to seniors,” Keevy said.
For Lana Prochnow, it was just her lucky day; she just moved back to Spokane from North Carolina and is living in a mobile home with her husband. Yet, that mobile home came with no AC, and in this triple digit heat, Prochnow’s living situation has quickly become extremely hot; the temperature inside her home is almost as hot as the air outside.
A temperature gauge provided a clear picture to the couple.
“And it said it was 94 degrees [inside]... so anyway, this was on our shopping list today to go buy a fan to put in the window at night,” Prochnow said.
Meals on Wheels has carried on this tradition for years in Spokane County. This year, with the first major heat wave coming as early as July, they're running a bit low on fans heading into the rest of the summer.