Electrical Outage Adds to the Problem

The phone rang at 5:30 AM with additional bad news. The electric is out on the entire block of East Market Street, the location of our family and women's facilities. To add fuel to the fire, a roof leak on the east side of the women's shelter is causing flooding in on the ground level where the men were staying. A sewer line stop up also occurred. We waited one hour to see if the electric would return before beginning plan "B". Finding that the electric was out in a wide portion of the city, we decided to move the women and families to the men's campus on Jefferson Street, at least until the electricity was repaired. We also called a nearby church, Highland Baptist, and the pastor agreed to meet our bus at the church and open up the fellowship hall for our families. Since Jefferson Street is so crowded, I hoped the church would allow us to use the space for the moms and kids and they did, thank God.

Marlene Gordon, director of the Coalition for the Homeless called about 7 AM and offered generators. It seems that three major shelters were affected by the power outage and the coalition asked us to pick up the 6 generators they have stored for just this type of situation and distribute them to two other facilities in addition to Wayside.

As it currently stands, our families (about 55 folks) just arrived at the church and are getting settled in the fellowship hall. About 80 single women are now in the dining room of the men's shelter and the men who were sleeping in the dining room are now sitting in chairs in the men's day room. We are packed. If the electric is not back on by 2 PM I will have our maintenance people direct wire the furnaces and lights to the generators so that the women and families can return to the shelter tonight to sleep.