By Sergio Olmos
PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Portland firefighters handed out water to the homeless and residents of the normally cool city flocked to cooling shelters as the U.S. Pacific Northwest baked for a third day on Friday under an oppressive heat wave.
Temperatures soared into the triple digits Fahrenheit across northwestern Oregon and into Washington state, pushing power grids to the limit.
"It’s hot now, it’s going to keep being hot. It feels like the new normal," said Kate Mudd, the 31-year-old owner of a Portland ceramics business. "It gets pretty toasty making ceramics."
Nearly 800 people had taken shelter in cooling centers across Portland as of Friday morning, a city spokesman said. About 150 had spent the night.
Firefighters and volunteers handed out water to homeless people who were reluctant to move to cooling centers, some out of fear their belongings would be stolen.
"What we're trying to do is to go to people instead of having people come to us, and so we found that people are comfortable where they are. They have communities, they have items, and sometimes they don't want to seek formal shelters." said Alex Dolle, a 17-year-old volunteer with the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management.
Portland tied a daily temperature record at 102 degrees F (38.8 degrees Celsius) on Wednesday. On Thursday the temperature reached 103 F (39 C)- or as one local TV station pointed out, hotter than Phoenix.
The high temperatures marked the third heat wave of the summer to punish the Pacific Northwest, caused, according to the National Weather Service, by a series of high-pressure systems stalled over the region.
The weather service issued excessive heat warnings for Oregon's Portland metropolitan area, much of the Columbia River Gorge and Willamette Valley and Washington state's Vancouver area.
The same atmospheric conditions were blamed for a heat wave in July that scorched much of the U.S. West and fueled a string of wildfires that have burned throughout much of the summer.