... responding to a reported natural gas leak at a Spokane Valley home.
The man is the 11th person to die in the aftermath of the ice storm.
Well, Washington Water Power's president says the company is deeply saddened by this tragedy.
Officials say this is an unfortunate reminder to all of us, the danger of these downed power
lines.
It really does point out the importance of safety around this issue, not only for our
employees, which we talk about every day, but also with the customers that are out there.
Well it really has become deadly and dangerous, the aftermath of the ice storm.
It's so unfortunate that this had to happen with all of the dangerous conditions out there,
but at least it has reminded us that we've got to stay clear of these lines.
The experts have trouble dealing with this kind of a serious problem out there.
There have been many problems reported following all of this.
Chimney fires continue to threaten lives and destroy property.
This morning a home on the Sunset Hill in West Spokane was gutted when flames from an
overheated fireplace spread to a wall.
News 4's Jeff Wray is joining us live from Fire Station 1 in downtown Spokane.
You know Bob, we've heard so much about this type of fire.
Across the city last night held more than 700 people and one third of that population
was elderly.
Now I've got Joyce Cameron here with me from the Red Cross and she's going to tell us what
kind of special needs does that present.
Well it was our busiest night at the shelters last night Rebecca and we do have a lot of
special needs patients.
We're trying to keep our special needs patients at the Libby Center School.
We had several children here that came down with chicken pox.
We sent all of those children over to that school.
People that have come down with flus and have been sick we're trying to keep in one location.
They are segregated however because we do have a normal population at Libby Center School
also.
But with that large number of elderly people, people that have special needs, we've got
some special needs ourselves that we are dealing with.
Okay and are you still calling for medically trained volunteers or what kind of response
have you gotten on that?
We've gotten great response from the calls out that we've had for medical professionals,
doctors and nurses and we still could use more help if those people could call into
the American Red Cross.
We put them to work as well as other volunteers as we talked about the fact that our volunteers
are working very long hours.
We're trying to keep them down to at least 18 hours but we can use the help if they want
to give us a call at the Red Cross.
Now just within the circle of people that I know, lots of people got their power back
last night.
Do you expect that last night could be the peak of your population at these shelters?
We're thinking that last night or tonight could possibly be the peak.
There still are 25 to 30,000 customers out there that don't have power and it still is
very cold and getting colder and there are a lot of people now that are coming into the
shelter that have hypothermia.
They're weirder than having to send off to the hospitals.
So people need to know that they can come down to the shelter even if it's just for
a couple of hours to get warm.
They don't have to spend the night here.
They can come down here and get a meal and get warm and then go back and sleep at their
homes if they really wanted to do that.
Okay and I understand that you served quite a few meals yesterday and what kind of financial
burdens did that put on you and what could you use from the public?
We did.
We served 2,800 meals yesterday, breakfast, lunch and dinners at all of our shelters to
all of the workers, to all of the people that came into the shelters that didn't necessarily
even stay here during the night.
It's putting a huge financial burden on the American Red Cross.
So we are asking for monetary contributions from people in our community and they're
walking in the door with them at the Red Cross.
We really appreciate that and we are just asking for more of that kind of support.
Okay, thank you very much Joyce.
And if you're still looking for a place to stay tonight at the Seth Woodard School and
here at the Convention Center, they have plenty of room left so come on down and get a hot
meal and a place to sleep.
Reporting live from downtown Spokane, Rebecca Maitland, News 4.
Thank you Rebecca.
Reporting from the Convention Center.
Looks like it's still pretty busy down there.
Yeah.
The Red Cross has brought people together in a lot of different ways.