Cold weather has claimed the lives of at least 10 Marylanders since October, including one victim found dead in his unheated Baltimore County home, state health officials said Monday.
Frigid winds drove temperatures to 2 degrees below zero at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Monday and minus 7 degrees in Westminster, according to the National Weather Service. State health officials said the death toll — which includes six cold-related deaths in December alone — could rise.
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“Today is brutal, but I think it’s a little early to report on this cold wave that has descended upon us,” said John Hammond, spokesman for Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
“These don’t always show up immediately.”
Last week a victim with a history of Alzheimer’s was found by a relative in an Anne Arundel County creek. The cause of death was drowning and hypothermia, Hammond said.
Baltimore City has yet to record a weather-related death, a fact advocates attributed to 75 beds added this year to a round-the-clock shelter on Guilford Avenue.
Baltimore Homeless Services President Diane Glauber said that while several homeless people were turned away from the shelter late Sunday night, she personally drove to the location of two known homeless women Monday to invite them to the shelter.
“We are going to do everything we can to get them off the streets,” Glauber said.
But several homeless people — including Timothy Dungee, who was huddled in blankets at a tent camp on Fayette Street on Monday afternoon — said they would rather stay on the streets.
Surviving his first winter on the streets in a makeshift tent of several blankets, Dungee said shelters are notorious for disease and thieves.
“Sometimes I don’t want to get out of those blankets, especially this morning — holy moly!” Dungee said. “But you deal with it. That’s the only thing you can do.”
Relief, at least temporary, is in sight. Temperatures are expected to rise a bit today, said National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Strong, and could reach 55 degrees by Wednesday.
