Winnipeg charities band together to provide pop-up shelter on extremely cold night

Staff at a Winnipeg shelter were getting ready to open their doors on Saturday night when the heat failed, but thanks to some teamwork with community organizations in the city, a pop-up shelter was opened an hour later.

Tessa Whitecloud, the executive director of 1JustCity, said that without the collaboration,more than two dozenpeople could have been outdoors on a night when the entire province is under an extreme cold warning.

"People tonight would have died without all of this collaboration. Thirtypeople is a lot of people to be outside tonight," she said.

Whitecloud saidthe emergency warming shelter at 109 PulfordSt.is undergoing renovations. During this time, the building is more open than it normally is and the heat was working overtime in the frigid cold to keep the temperature up.

That's when it failed.

Whitecloud said she was immediately concerned for the people who were hoping to stay in the shelter.

"We had to figure out a way for people to be warm. And where was I going to ... pull that teamwork from? And right away, of course, it was the other shelters in Winnipeg because we collaborate so frequently," she said.

Within an hour, something amazing happened.

The Salvation Army offered up its chapel so all 30 people would have a warm, safe place to sleep, and Spence Neighbourhood Association and Main Street Project stepped in and provided transport vans to help bring people there so they wouldn't have to walk on such a cold night.

Whitecloud saidthe heat will be back up and running at thePulford Street site on Sunday night.

She saidshe's grateful for the network of community organizations that support one another during extraordinary circumstances like this.