As temperatures plunged into the teens this week, spurring Kitsap residents to remember the three Ps of cold weather: pets, plants and pipes.

When it gets dangerously frigid, there are numerous reminders to bring your pets and plants in from outside and to wrap your water pipes so they don’t burst. We suggest there is another important P of cold weather being unintentionally overlooked here in North Kitsap: people.

The Department of Emergency Management and Kitsap County Resources responded to the cold weather by opening two severe weather shelters. We applaud this. That the shelters are in Bremerton and Port Orchard, however, doesn’t do much to help those in the North End who need refuge. The shelters’ locations are based on need and available resources.

The fact is, those who don’t have a place to stay during cold weather likely don’t have a form of transportation to get to Bremerton or Port Orchard.

North Kitsap Fishline’s Raelenea Rodriguez said it best: “There are zero shelters, cold weather or otherwise,” she said. “I feel like we get forgotten up here sometimes.”

The good news is that there are several groups in and around North Kitsap who see the need and are willing to fill it.

What’s missing is the communication between those who are interested in helping and those who know the logistics of lending a hand.

All that’s needed for a severe weather shelter to open in the North End is for an agency to offer space and volunteers, according to Emergency Management Spokeswoman Susan May.

Hopefully, the one organization that seems to be taking the lead on organizing a severe weather shelter here in the North End — First Lutheran Church of Poulsbo — can hit the right benchmarks to make it happen.

The sooner those two parties communicate, the better.