Hot Houstonians Take Refuge at Sharpstown's Bayland Cooling Center
A pile of charging phones, battery packs, and a laptop sat on the table in front of Calvin and Rebekkah Bratton as their three grandchildren watched Toy Story on a television in the main room of Bayland Community Center.
They had come all the way to Sharpstown because there were no cooling centers in their Third Ward neighborhood, said Calvin, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, a white mesh beret, and—tattooed on his left bicep—a suit of hearts (cards). They had tried the downtown library first, but said it was charging $30 for parking. Bayland was free.
It was Wednesday—two days after Hurricane Beryl—and the Brattons still had no power. Temperatures ran in the 90s and 100s inside their house during the day, and 75-80 degrees at night, said Calvin. That's when they were able to get a breeze through the windows.
"With mosquitoes," added Rebekkah.
The grandmother with seashells in her braids said that the food in their refrigerator had spoiled. When they stopped by the food distribution right outside Bayland, she told the workers, "You guys are a blessing."
Brandy Mendoza and her son, Von Salinas, lived much closer to Bayland. Their third-story apartment near Beechnut and Gessner was "so hot," she said. Their thermostat said 83, but she didn't believe it. With no power for their AC, fridge, or freezer, "We lost all our food—and sleep."
Mendoza said she woke up every two hours with sweat pooling on her face and trickling down her neck. Salinas said he slept alright.
At Bayland, they sat at a table in a side room, assembling a jigsaw puzzle of a church in wintertime. They said it was just to pass the time, but perhaps it helped them feel a little cooler.
A woman who only identified herself as Rosa sat at a white table with her two daughters, the older one coloring. Rosa said that their top-floor apartment had been without power since Monday morning. Since heat rises, it had been “miserable”—close to 90 degrees inside. The cooling center was a welcome reprieve, but she wasn’t excited for when it closed at 6:00 PM: “I’m gonna have to go home and burn tonight.”
“I can push through it and endure, but I have two daughters,” she said. The hardest thing for her was seeing them suffer. But it was worse for one of her neighbors, who had a three-month-old baby, Rosa added.
How Did People Find out about the Cooling Center?
According to the Houston Chronicle, in a 2011 survey, only 36% of Houstonian respondents knew what a cooling center was. AlertHouston notifications tell people where to find centers and other emergency resources, but in 2023, less than 9% of Houstonians were signed up for citywide alerts, wrote Chronicle reporter Jhair Romero.
No one who spoke to The Sharpener at Bayland said that they found out about the cooling center through AlertHouston or even the news. Instead, they pointed to their social networks.
The Brattons said they heard about Bayland through a friend from their church, Wheeler Avenue Baptist. Brandy Mendoza said she heard through Facebook. Rosa said she heard through a friend and passed the word on to her neighbor with the three-month-old baby. A Chinatown resident named Avery said that he found out through Instagram at 4 PM the night before, just two hours before Bayland closed on Tuesday.
Centralized, official sources of information simply aren't reaching many Houstonians—even in times of crisis. For potentially lifesaving knowledge, many in our city are relying on a patchwork of social media and word-of-mouth communication.
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