After a long, cold winter protecting the unsheltered in Eugene and Springfield, the operations of Egan Warming Centers have concluded. It was a record-setting season.
Between November and March, Egan shelter sites opened for 31 nights—the most in the program’s 14-year history. A network of 760 trained volunteers worked nearly 20,000 combined hours to operate seven different warming sites on nights when temperatures dropped below 30 degrees.
“I know we keep talking about, you know, 31 nights—that’s a record for Egan," said Tim Black, the Winter Strategies and Response Coordinator for St. Vincent de Paul, which administers the warming center program. "But you know every time I catch myself whining, I remember the people that we serve. That’s a lot of nights when our unhoused neighbors were cold and wet and—I can’t even imagine.”
Black said he is constantly amazed at what Egan volunteers accomplish. Without them, there would be no warming centers, he said. The 2022-23 winter season was particularly trying coming out of the COVID pandemic. Many volunteers are elderly and still didn’t feel safe coming out. But hundreds did.
The opioid crisis added to the stress. Black keeps a box of Narcan on his desk and said the overdose reversal drug was administered on a number of occasions at warming sites. Luckily, no one died.
During an activation, volunteers open each warming center in the evening and operate it through morning. They provide guests with sleeping pads and blankets, warm drinks and meals, heartwarming hospitality, basic first aid, and donations of gloves, socks and other winter gear needed to survive on the streets in winter.
Black said they’ve begun clearing out the warming sites in preparation for next winter. Volunteer recruitment will start in the fall.
For more information about volunteering with Egan, visit their website.
The Egan Warming Centers are named in honor of Major Thomas Egan who froze to death in December 2008 on the streets of Eugene.
