Warming centers were made available during 2017's first round of winter in Middle Tennessee.
Temperatures didn't just dip below freezing they plummeted into the single digits Friday night.
We have been working all week to prepare for this cold weather. 60 beds are being squeezed into our classroom space as overflow shelter. pic.twitter.com/KG05T3wXf5
— Room In The Inn (@roomintheinn) January 6, 2017
East Park Center off of Woodland Street has been closed and was at capacity as it became a warming center.
Its capacity is 75, but in order help people stay out of the cold, staff and councilman Jim shulman held an emergency meeting to approve going over capacity. About 100 people were allowed inside.
Makeshift beds were placed on the floor. Shulman said people will have to improvise and use sleep on the floor just to keep from freezing to death outside.
"Fortunately everybody doing the right thing and they capacity still letting people in there's an overall plan on how to deal with this stuff but sometimes the plant have to be modified so what happened is the staff realize that they keep letting people in," said Jim Shulman.
The councilman said the plan was to come back tomorrow to regroup and assess how they plan to keep the shelter open.
