Multnomah County employees and others in the Portland metro area have been hard at work providing resources and making sure folks have a place to stay safe and warm.
Chris Voss, the director of Multnomah County Emergency Management joined OPB “Morning Edition” host Jess Hazel on Friday to talk about the storm.
Multnomah County employee Dianne Clay puts a signboard in front of the Grand Oak Shelter, housed in the former Andy and Bax Outdoor Store in Southeast Portland, Feb. 11, 2025. The shelter is one of five locations opened by Multnomah County in response to the extreme cold weather. This site is one of two new shelters opened to increase capacity, in addition to the three sites that first opened Feb. 10.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Jess Hazel: First off, can you tell us how Emergency Management got ready for this bout of bad weather?
Chris Voss: We’ve been in communication for weeks with many of our partners and just yesterday, as part of one of our regular calls, we brought together 140 different people from dozens of different organizations to help coordinate what we think is an appropriate response based on what that day might bring us.
The National Weather Service, TriMet, all our cities, utilities, transportation organizations, it’s important for Multnomah County not just to have a plan for ourselves but also to very much communicate with all of our partners to make sure that it’s a countywide response and not just a county government response.
Hazel: And how many people ended up using emergency warming shelters last night? Did you have to turn anyone away?
Voss: No, and it is always our goal not to turn anybody away. We opened approximately 1,000 beds, and the last count I had about an hour ago was 894 people were in those locations.
Hazel: And what about staffing? I know yesterday the county put out a call for community volunteers to help staff warming shelters. Did you have enough people to provide that proper support?
Voss: Yes, we did. But that is also an ongoing situation that we’re always looking at. So if we have to expand —such as if we meet thresholds tonight* and we’re going to open again — we might need to expand some of those locations even more. And so you might see us also request the public. It’s typically just these largest events where we will reach out to the public, but we very much appreciate their support. And they’re really a key part of that plan. We start with contractors and government workers, but when it’s really big, we also need the county and the community to support us, and it’s great when they do.
Hazel: The forecast says things should warm up later today, and most of the ice and snow will probably melt, but overnight temperatures will still be very cold. Will the emergency shelters stay open into the weekend?
Voss: That’s a conversation we’re going to finalize in a few minutes. And believe it or not, it probably will not be the temperatures that ultimately drive us. While we recognize the hypothermia risk will probably decrease tonight, we also have another consideration, and that is if we’re going to exit 900 people. We’ve got to make sure that the sidewalks and where they’re walking is not a hazard to them as well. So we very much want to make sure that there is some melting in a way that people can exit safely.
Hazel: The winter storm last year in mid-January shut down much of the state for multiple days, and it also revealed some challenges with communication between city and county leaders. This storm was much less severe, but were there lessons learned during last year’s storm that applied this time around?
Voss: Absolutely, and I think it’s one of the reasons why we’re taking a harder look at the ground situation and the sidewalks. We didn’t get as much ice, but we did get snow and that snow is pretty well packed and it is slippery in a lot of areas, so that is definitely a consideration. And know a lot of people talk about differences between the county and city. And I can assure you, we have a lot more in common than we do not have in common. And it’s great that together for this event we very much worked hand in hand. We were supporting some of their locations, and I know that they’ve been very much helping to recruit their staff to support the locations that are open across the board.
Hazel: If the Portland mayor is successful in opening as many shelter beds as he wants to in the next year, will there still be a need for emergency weather shelters?
Voss: That’s a great question. And you know what? We all hope that that is very much true, and I’m confident that we’re going to be moving in that direction. There may still be a population that doesn’t necessarily want to support or go to some of those locations, but I’m really, really excited about seeing improvements in this area and getting more people off the street - not just on the highest risk days - but really all year round.
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*Note: After this interview aired, Multnomah County decided to keep emergency shelters open through at least 10 a.m. Saturday.
