Winter hasn’t officially started yet, but already two San Mateo County residents appear to have died while trying to stay warm in a car, and a third person froze to death at a Sacramento homeless encampment — highlighting the immense dangers cold, rainy weather can pose to those with nowhere warm to go.
Police responded to a residential neighborhood in South San Francisco just before 6 p.m. Friday, where they found two men unresponsive in a parked car. It appears they were burning charcoal or a similar substance for heat — which likely filled the car with carbon monoxide, poisoning them, said Sgt. Sean Curmi. Paramedics attempted to revive them, but they were pronounced dead at the scene.
The victims were 40-year-old Esteban Torres Ortiz and 37-year-old Eleazar Altamirano Trujillo, both of South San Francisco, according to the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office. Their official cause of death has not yet been released. Officials do not know whether they were homeless.
Meanwhile, 74-year-old Morris Jobe succumbed to the cold last month while at a homeless encampment in Sacramento. He was found unresponsive at the camp on Nov. 17 and taken to the hospital, where he died the next day, according to county spokeswoman Kimberly Nava. His cause of death was ruled as hypothermia and methamphetamine use.
The deaths highlight one of the myriad of dangers the winter months pose for the Bay Area’s most vulnerable people — those huddled in tents, leaky RVs and cars trying to stay warm and dry.
“Homelessness is just incredibly devastating to health in every way,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, professor of medicine and director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations. “It doesn’t need to be below freezing. People die of cold long before the weather goes down to 32 degrees.”
It was around 50 degrees in South San Francisco Friday evening, and dropped down to 45 later in the night. The first two days of the month marked the coldest start to December since 1970, with an average temperature of 46 degrees across the region, according to the National Weather Service. Rain also drenched the Bay Area over the weekend, with more scattered showers forecasted for early this week.
Many cities and counties turn public buildings into “warming centers” and welcome unhoused residents on the coldest days of the year. Most of these facilities are open only during the day, and there are limited places for people to get warm overnight. Sacramento, where the temperature dropped to 39 degrees on the day Jobe died, did not open warming centers that day, according to The Sacramento Bee.
Santa Clara County encouraged homeless residents to take refuge from the cold, wet weather in public libraries and community centers over the weekend, and it has opened two overnight warming centers in San Jose through April. The Roosevelt Community Center and West Valley Branch Library are open overnight by referral only.
The county also is giving tents, tarps and emergency mylar blankets to outreach workers to distribute among homeless camps, said advocate Shaunn Cartwright with the Unhoused Response Group. That helps immensely, as it gives people a better chance of staying dry, she said. But even so, this winter has been rough so far.
“Folks have been getting really wet,” she said. “The cold has been a huge thing.”
So far this year, more than 200 unhoused people have died in Santa Clara County, according to the county. Two died of hypothermia — one person in a Mountain View homeless encampment in January, and one on a sidewalk in San Jose in April.
In Alameda County, 162 unhoused people have died so far this year, according to the Coroner’s Bureau. Last year saw 196 deaths, including one cold-related fatality. Cecil Arnold Jr., 66, died of hypothermia in January while outside in Berkeley.
“Being homeless is just not safe in any stretch of the imagination,” Kushel said.
Source: www.mercurynews.com