City Council member, firefighters association criticize Austin's cold weather shelter policy

City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes says, "We already know we are expecting freezing temperatures starting Thursday. We need to give our community time to make arrangements."

AUSTIN, Texas - The City of Austin says it's prepared to activate cold weather shelters, but its policy says decisions on whether to active them are determined no later than 9 a.m. the day of.

City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes is questioning that policy. In a Tweet, Fuentes said, "The issue here is WHY wait until day of to activate the shelters? We already know we are expecting freezing temperatures starting Thursday. We need to give our community time to make arrangements."

The Austin Firefighters Association also questioned this policy in a Tweet, saying "When it is highly probable that life threatening weather is coming in…there is no reason to wait, we should show a little leadership, plan ahead and announce the plan to those in the most risk."

The City of Austin policy requires certain criteria to be met before cold weather shelters open. It needs to be 32 degrees with rain or a wind chill of 32 degrees or colder.

And, again, the policy says decisions on whether to open the shelters are made no later than 9 a.m. on the day of.

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While the city has not released information about the location of the shelters yet, Fuentes says the plan is to operate three cold weather shelters on a 24-hour basis with the ability to expand capacity.

One Texas Center, located at 505 Barton Springs Road, will serve as a registration and transportation center.

For more information on the cold weather shelters, you can call the hotline at 512-305-4233.

The City of Austin says their shelters are equipped to last several nights should temperatures remain below freezing.

Austin Energy says it has completed all winterization at its power plants and facilities, and they also have a "sufficient" amount of field crews, available contractors, and on-call personnel for this cold snap.