WINTRY COLD BLASTS AREA

TEMPERATURE DROP SENDS SOCIAL WORKERS SCRAMBLING TO FIND SHELTER FOR THE HOMELESS

The first hard freeze of the fall hit the Washington area yesterday, sending police and social workers scrambling to find shelter for the homeless while the more fortunate began pulling overcoats out of storage and putting antifreeze in their cars.

A near-record low temperature of 21 degrees was forecast for the early morning hours today, two degrees above the 19-degree mark set here in 1920. In the last five days the temperature has plummeted more than 50 degrees, from Sunday's unseasonably warm 77 degrees, which tied the 1975 record high for that date.

"It's such a sudden shift, people are going to wake up in the morning and say, 'Is this for real?' " said Scott Prosise, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. "It's so bitterly cold, you're just not ready for a shift like that."

With winter not due to start officially until Dec. 21, arctic weather continued blasting bitter cold, snow and icy winds across much of the nation yesterday, crowding shelters with the homeless and breaking all-time lows in dozens of places.

Social service agencies reported soup kitchens and overnight shelters jammed with street people and families down on their luck seeking shelter from the unseasonably wintry conditions. In many communities, hard-pressed shelter workers were forced to open emergency facilities to handle the unexpected crowds of homeless people.

All-time lows were set in the last few days from Corpus Christi, Tex., (37) to Lincoln, Neb., (2) and Rockford, Ill., (3).

Weather forecasters say that the brutal cold that moved into the Washington area yesterday -- dropping temperatures by almost two degrees an hour through the late afternoon and evening -- is caused by the same cold air masses that burst out of the Arctic last week and broke records throughout the nation.

The wintry weather has caused at least 20 deaths, according to the Associated Press. A succession of storms and low temperatures have led to three deaths each in Massachusetts and Michigan; two each in Missouri, North Dakota, Montana, Iowa and Minnesota, and one each in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Arkansas and South Dakota.

In this area, today marks the season's first test of the region's network of privately and publicly financed homeless shelters. Operators of shelters in the District said yesterday they already are operating at or near capacity and expressed grave concern that they won't be able to handle the expected crush of homeless people.

"I don't know what we'll do with them, because we have nowhere to put them," said Sister Maria Mairlot, a coordinator at Mount Carmel House, a women's shelter operated by the Carmelite Sisters of Charity at 471 G Place NW. The shelter's 42 beds are filled every night.

"Sometimes in the middle of the night, we get calls from the police and the hospitals, but we don't know how to help," she said. " . . . I'll just have to let them sit on a hard chair in the dining room. It's better than being outside."

D.C. activists for the homeless said that there are more homeless people walking the streets now than ever.

Many homeless people, especially those with psychological problems, prefer to live on their own on the streets, and won't go into the shelters until a cold snap, and then they crowd the shelters in droves, the activists said.

"It's worse than any year in terms of the numbers of homeless," said Mitch Snyder, spokesman for the Community for Creative Non-Violence, which operates the city's largest shelter at Second and D streets NW. "People physically can't come inside. There's no room. People are like sardines in here right now.

"We'll see the results of our inaction in the emergency rooms and the morgue," said Snyder, whose shelter can accommodate only about half the 1,000 persons it housed nightly last winter because of continuing renovations to its building.

One reason there are fewer beds for the city's homeless this year is the closing last April of the federally subsidized, 400-bed shelter run by the D.C. Coalition for the Homeless in Southeast Washington.

D.C. Commissioner of Social Services Audrey Rowe activated a "cold weather contingency plan" last night, sending social workers into the streets to try to persuade homeless people to go to shelters. Under the plan, those who refuse are given blankets, clothes and hot drinks. Those who choose to remain outdoors and are found by mental health workers to be mentally impaired are removed from the streets, city officials said.

D.C. police reported yesterday that they had dismantled a group of shanties, made of wood and heavy plastic, under the K Street Bridge near 26th Street NW, where eight homeless men had lived for several weeks. City officials offered to take the men to shelters, but only two accepted, police said.

City officials said that even though D.C. shelters are packed, "sit-up" space will be found in city-subsidized centers for people seeking aid.

"No person will be turned away," Rowe said.

Nine homeless persons died of exposure in Washington last winter.

Although the numbers of homeless people are less in the suburbs than in the District, suburban social workers said the problems they face are daunting.

"This cold weather has really thrown us for a loop," said Vin Harwell, minister at the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church in Fairfax County, which coordinates a homeless shelter with other local churches. Dozens of homeless Virginians, including employed people unable to find affordable apartments, have crowded the churches this week, forcing county officials to house some in motels on an emergency basis, Harwell said.

"Ordinarily, it doesn't get this cold this quickly," Harwell said. "We knew to expect this many people coming in, but never this early in the year."

Meanwhile, in the High Plains, the Rockies and the Upper Midwest, drifting snow cut off roads, closed schools and added to the rising toll of deaths.

The record low temperatures caught officials unprepared in the Midwest, as well. In Milwaukee, Maureen Martin, director of emergency shelters for the Salvation Army, said the shelter's 400 beds have all been filled. Martin called it "a critical situation . . . . Everyone was kind of caught off guard."

In the Washington area, clothing stores reported yesterday that they were jammed with shoppers looking for winter clothing. A spokesman for Woodward & Lothrop said the chain's 16 stores were experiencing a tripling in the sale of gloves.

Doug Neilson, a spokesman for the local American Automobile Association, said he expects twice the average number of calls for emergency road service today, mostly caused by dead batteries.

Dennis Whitestone, manager of the Shirlington Texaco station, said that his lot is filled with about 90 cars waiting to have antifreeze and battery checks. "People don't actually bring their cars in here until it gets forced on them by the cold weather," he said.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.