Isaiah Salters warmed his hands over an oil lamp’s flame while his father, the Rev. John Salters, lined up a pool shot by the light of a window at G.O. Ministries Wednesday afternoon.

A student at Lakeside High, Isaiah had his plans for the day altered by the ice storm that closed schools across Ashtabula County. For his father and the Rev. Samuel Richardson, it was business as usual: an afternoon pool game in the chilly Station Avenue building.

“You can either play pool or curl up in the bed and go to sleep,” said Maverick Naylor, who manages the ministries’ soup kitchen.

The only heat in the building came from the gas stove in the kitchen. Naylor says the ministry once owned some kerosene heaters, but like the electrical generators that powered the place prior to tapping into the grid, the heaters had been stolen.

With the temperature in the building hovering around 50 degrees, both Salters and Naylor wished they had a couple of them. At least Salters had negotiated the use of a generator to provide lights for the dinner crowd.

Naylor sipped vintage coffee left over from the prior day, and reheated on the stove, as he pondered what he’d cook for the guests.

“I’m working on it,” he said. “It might not be what everybody wants, but it will be food, and it will be hot.”

G.O. was one of several places in Ashtabula where residents could seek shelter Wednesday. The chambers of Ashtabula City Council and the cafeteria of Ashtabula County Medical Center were two others.

The Red Cross set up the warming shelter in council chambers shortly after noon, said Red Cross volunteers Shelley Meister and Maria Abbott. Renee Henry and Kristy Bernardo learned about the shelter from listening to the radio, packed up Henry’s four children and headed for the Municipal Building on Main Avenue.

“We have no electricity, no heat. We can’t even cook,” said Henry, who lives on West 47th Street. “It got really cold in there.”

“We all decided to cuddle up in one bed, two adults and four kids,” said Bernardo when asked how they dealt with the cold.

Thanks to a city employee who brought in a small television, Henry’s children — Xander, 1; Jerry IV, 3; Drake, 5; and Steven, 11 — had entertainment. The Red Cross offered snacks and water, but the volunteers didn’t know whether more substantial food options or overnight shelter would be offered. The Red Cross office on Center Street was without power, and the relief efforts were being coordinated by cell phone.

“It’s a place to be warm right now,” said Henry. “That’s all that matters to us.”

Tina Stasiewski, ACMC director of business development, said the decision was made shortly before noon to offer the cafeteria as a shelter. Stasiewski says ACMC’s primary concern was for the well-being of senior citizens 65 and older because they are more susceptible to the cold. ACMC did not suffer the power outage that affected many homes and businesses in the area, and if the power from the grid had been lost, the hospital’s auxiliary generators would have kicked in.

Florence Cedoz went to the cafeteria upon the recommendation of her landlord, Dale Corlew, who manages the Greenway Senior Housing on Nathan Avenue. Cedoz uses an oxygen machine disabled by the outage. With only a couple of small tanks of oxygen on hand, she and her daughter, Miracle, and grandson, Ricky, 8 months, took shelter in the hospital cafeteria. Miracle says it got so cold in their apartment she had to dress Ricky in his snowsuit to keep him warm.

They arrived at the cafeteria with a packed suitcase and loaf of bread, thinking it would be an overnight stay. But Stasiewski says the cafeteria was not set up as a disaster shelter and would close at 9 p.m. The shelter was to reopen at 8 a.m. today.

Stasiewski said the hospital’s census has been running at more than 100 percent all winter, and there’s no room to accommodate the public overnight.

“We have just about every bed occupied by a patient,” she says.

The hospital also had to accommodate dialysis patients from the DaVita facility on West 19th Street, which was without power. Some patients were referred to DaVita’s Madison center, as well.

At Greenway Senior Housing, residents Dorothy and Chester Johns, Pearl Britton, and Nick and Martha Radwancky took the adventure in stride as they chatted in the commons area, which is heated by a gas fireplace. Although their apartments were without heat (each apartment has its own forced-air gas furnace), temperatures in the rooms were in the mid-60s.

“That’s why I’m not panicking,” Dorothy Johns said.

Johns said she and Corlew periodically made the rounds to check on residents in the 20 or so occupied apartments.

“We couldn’t ask for a better manager; he’s has been out there, knocking on doors,” she said.

“Everybody is helping each other and watching out for each other. It’s like a family atmosphere here,” Corlew said. “Things are going very well.”

Corlew said family members who had power would be taking some of the residents to live with them overnight. Others planned to tough it out by the fireplace, under a pile of blankets in their rooms or put on more clothing. Britton had three sweat shirts on; Radwancky wore her heavy winter coat.

They had gone to Alleman’s for lunch and hoped the power would be on by 5 p.m. so they could cook the evening meal in their apartments. And if it was not?

“We’re going to be like the Amish,” Johns said.