A volunteer-run warming center provided a place for several Gilmer County locals and visitors to wait out the recent deep freeze.
Located at the Gilmer County Civic Center, the warming center normally opens at 5 p.m. when temperatures dip below 30 degrees.
With low temperatures in the single digits the week of Christmas, the warming center stayed open 24/7 from the Thursday before Christmas till the next Monday.
“Ordinarily, we don’t keep it open 24 hours a day because it’s not a shelter, and we have certain guidelines we have to go by,” said Sandy Williams, warming center team coordinator.
The center had been seeing four or five people coming to stay per night until snow began to fall Dec. 26, quickly sticking to the already frozen ground and leaving several drivers stranded. Many of those drivers left their cars and wound up, one way or another, at the Civic Center.
Husband and wife Joey and Laura Lyles recently joined on as warming center volunteers. Their first time staying overnight to manage the place was that snowy Monday.
“It was a wild and crazy night, but a good night. We were expecting to have at least the same number of people coming that we’d already had coming that night, but we didn’t know what to expect the worse the weather got,” said Joey Lyles. “We had volunteers who brought food, and they were spinning out on the roads. The volunteers were struggling that night, too.”
In all, 23 people plus volunteers spent the snowy night at the warming center. That’s likely the most to have ever been housed there at any one time, at least in recent memory.
“It started snowing and, within a 15-minute span, (people were getting stranded),” said Laura Lyles. “The EMTs and sheriff’s department brought some people by, and Good Samaritans brought some people. The last family came in at around 1:45 a.m. We had two families from Florida and one family from Alabama, as well as a lot of people who couldn’t get back into Coosawattee (River Resort) and didn’t have anywhere else to go. They all ended up getting pointed to the warming center.”
Joey and Laura said they became involved with the warming center because it was an opportunity to help take care of people in their hometown. Laura said she’s become more aware of the number of homeless people in Gilmer County by managing the local Roots Thrift Store, which helps foster kids.
“We love Jesus, we love people and we love Ellijay. Volunteering (at the warming center) was an opportunity for us to help and to just love on people,” she said
Overseen by temporary housing ministry New Beginnings for Gilmer County, the warming center is certainly available to people who are homeless. But it can be used by anyone who simply needs to get in out of the cold, Laura noted.
“We had people who are homeless in here; we had an attorney in here and families with children. Anybody can come if they need it,” she added.
Joey said the sleeping area in the Civic Center gym allowed for personal space and distance between cots for those staying at the center, including families with children. Around 20 more people probably could have been housed there in addition to the 23 and given their own space that night, he added.
“A cool thing was some of the people who’d been staying here all week were helping the people and families who came in when it snowed. They were being volunteers and helping, too,” said Joey.
Williams said local police officers pointed some other stranded motorists to the Civic Center, but they didn’t ever arrive there. “I understand that all the (hotels and motels) were full,” she added.
Anyone who stays the night at the warming center gets a warm meal and breakfast. The last guest normally has to leave by 7 a.m., but special accommodations were made during the deep freeze when the center was open all day.
“We said goodbye to the last two couples at around 3:30 that Tuesday afternoon. They were really excited to not have to sleep in their cars,” said Laura.
The warming center team didn’t expect to have to open again until sometime after the new year, but the rest of January, February and March will likely have other weather events that bring temperatures down to below freezing.
“We’ve got four teams, and they will rotate till (the weather is warm enough not to open). We will announce when it opens on the Homeless in Ellijay and local public safety (Facebook pages),” said Williams.