Cooling stations are refuges for homeless, vulnerable: ‘It’s way too hot’

Esther David sat smiling in a heavily air-conditioned room on Wednesday afternoon at the Courtyard Homeless Resource Center.

“It’s too damn hot outside,” the 72-year-old said. “It’s way too hot.”

Just outside, dozens of people sat on the streets in 109-degree heat, some with towels on their heads to cover them from the sun.

David and her friend Woodie Colbert, 64, who sat in the chair next to her, sleep every night out on mats in the center’s courtyard, where there are large fans spraying air and mist. During the day, they cool off inside the room — mostly, David said, for her 1-year-old Chihuahua-dachshund mix named Buddy, for whom the heat is particularly challenging.

“Where he goes, I go,” Davis told the Review-Journal as she cradled the puppy in her arms.

The Courtyard Homeless Resource Center, on Las Vegas Boulevard between East Owens and East Washington avenues, is one of the dozens of places designated as an official cooling station by the National Weather Service. The centers, which include recreation centers and libraries, offer air conditioning and water to anyone who comes in.

According to a Clark County news release, over a dozen cooling stations and over 30 libraries, which were also offering their facilities for cooling, opened Wednesday and will stay open through next Wednesday, July 10.

While there were hundreds of people at the Courtyard, other cooling centers, like the Pearson Community Center, on West Carey Avenue between Martin Luther King Boulevard and Comstock Drive, and Neighborhood Recreation Center, on North Bruce Street between Stanley and East Tonopah avenues, see far fewer people.

Sharon Steele, the program director for the Pearson Community Center, said the center has been seeing around 10 people a day. People can come in and sit in the lobby, which has bottled water and a cooler with water. She added that most people come in the mornings.

“It’s this spot right here that everybody likes,” said David West, referring to the Courtyard. West has been homeless for about two months since losing his apartment, he said.

West, who was at the center to pick up medications at the mail center, typically goes to a movie theater or swims at Dula Gymnasium when he wants to cool down, he said.

When it gets dangerously hot, around 25 people from the organization Help of Southern Nevada travel the streets with flyers about heat, water and vehicles to transport people to cooling centers, according to director Louis Lacey.

In addition to the homeless, the cooling stations also serve people who live in suboptimal housing or places where the air conditioner has failed, Lacey said.

The organization also calls 911 for people in heat distress.

“I usually get a text saying, ‘Hey, we’re calling 911.’ I didn’t get one today. So today was a good day,” Lacey said. “If we get up to the 116, 117 like they’re talking about, that’s going to change everything.”

Contact kfutterman@reviewjournal.com.