Three team members from the Salvation Army Ridge Meadows Ministries were in the community during the lunch hour on a hot Thursday afternoon handing out bottles of water.
The not-for-profit received a timely donation of a pallet of bottles from Costco, and were providing them to thirsty folk at Memorial Peace Park in downtown Maple Ridge.
With temperatures rising to 37, 40, and 41 Celsius Saturday through Monday, the Salvation Army will be busy making sure the city’s vulnerable population stays hydrated.
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Executive director Mark Stewart said the organisation will be out every day over the next four days.
“We want to make sure everyone is being served,” he said, noting any outreach teams in the community are welcome to come by their headquarters on Lougheed Highway and 222 Street to grab water too.
Stewart also said the headquarters will be available to anyone looking to escape from the oppressive weather.
“After meeting with some community agencies yesterday, we discovered that there was more that we could do,” he explained.
“We decided to open up our main emergency shelter to let people use it as a cooling station. It’s not something we were planning on doing, but once we recognized that there was a huge need for it, we decided that was a good option for us.”
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