Plagued by Winter

How did unsheltered people survive Iowa winters before the Joppa Winter Heat Program?

“Well, a lot of them just froze to death,” says James Walden, 60, who is spending his third winter in a tent near downtown. He knows of people who took off their coats and boots, in the glow of too much alcohol, and died of hypothermia.

Other cold victims don’t die.

“I saw a guy at the shelter in a wheelchair with no legs. Froze them off several winters ago,” Herb Myers, 50, remembers. Herb is spending his fourth winter outside. “It don’t take much to freeze to death in the cold, especially if you’re wet, drunk or sick.”

That’s what terrifies Sandra McFall, 59. Her disability check hasn’t come and she is unprepared for subfreezing temperatures.

“All I have now is a sleeping bag, some blankets and a shelter I made out of an old sign and some blankets. I sleep with a sandwich and a bottle of water in the sleeping bag so it won’t freeze… but last night, it froze. What am I going to do?”

Without the Joppa Winter Heat Program, homeless people use fire to keep warm. Herb constructed a four-candle heater from a cone-shaped piece of streetlight. “It’s enough to keep my gallon jug of water from freezing most nights,” he says.

Or, people rely on other dangerous ways to stay warm. Army veteran David Howarth, 57, used campfires and charcoal braziers when he was homeless several years ago in Tennessee and Kentucky.

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” David says, as he faces his first Iowa winter. But he admits that he’s seen people badly burned when their tents caught on fire or asphyxiated by carbon monoxide from smoldering charcoal. “And you nearly freeze to death at night when you have to put your fires out.”

This will be David’s first winter using an indoor-safe Joppa heater and he is grateful. “I could probably survive on my own. The military trained me and I’ve been winter camping since I was a kid. But this year I’ve got my girlfriend with me. Cindy’s from North Carolina and not used to the extreme cold. I gotta take care of her.”

Homeless people always worry about their friends. “The closest place to get warm around here is the QuikTrip…about a mile away,” David says, and that can be way too far. “Sometimes people go into a ‘give up’ mode. You’re so cold. You just lie down and give up.” David says he tries to keep track of people near his camp and lift their spirits, but it’s Joppa heat that can save people’s lives.

You can be a part of the Joppa Winter Heat Program and provide lifesaving heaters and weekly fuel deliveries to homeless campers. A contribution of $125 provides a start-up system that will warm someone, body and soul, all winter. A $60 contribution can provide someone heat and hope for a month.