Compassionate stranger pays hotel stay for 70 homeless people for shelter from record-breaking polar temperatures in the MidWest
4572 Mins Read
Amidst record-breaking polar temperatures in the Midwest, a compassionate stranger paid for 70 homeless people to stay in a hotel.
Though Chicago city officials have urged their homeless residents to stay in proper shelters and warming centers, a group of rough sleepers in the South Side stayed in their tented encampment. Firefighters were called to the campsite on Wednesday – the second coldest day in Chicago’s history – when a propane tank exploded after sitting too close to a space heater.
No one was injured, but law enforcement officials went on to discover over 100 propane tanks in the encampment, which prompted the fire department to issue a Level 1 Hazmat alert for hazardous materials.
The Washington Post reports that millions of people across the Midwest are enduring a freeze normally reserved for the Arctic Circle as temperatures in some areas dropped below minus-50 degrees Thursday. The second day of frightful cold, bottoming out to record lows, was blamed for several deaths across the region, and fears grew for the most vulnerable populations.
In Mt. Carroll, Ill., a trained weather observer reported that temperatures plunged to minus-38 degrees Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service. If certified, it would be the state’s lowest temperature on record, supplanting a minus-36 degree day in Congerville on Jan. 5, 1999. In northeast Minnesota, the unincorporated community of Cotton sank to minus-56 degrees — four shy of that state’s coldest temperature.
The frigid temperatures across the Midwest taxed the infrastructure that was keeping the coldest parts of America warm. Electrical grids collapsed, airline gas lines froze, and authorities encouraged the largely home-bound population of the hardest-hit states to turn thermostats down to ease the burden on utility systems. Even that wasn’t always enough. Power outages roiled swaths of Wisconsin and Iowa, plunging thousands into a brief, unheated darkness.
