A crippling snowstorm is expected to dump an extreme amount of snow across the Washington area.

A crippling snowstorm is expected to dump an extreme amount of snow across the Washington area.

The skies graying, John Mendez worked Friday with a sense of urgency.

“Drew! Drew! Are you here?” he called, standing outside a tent in a homeless camp tucked in a small patch of woods four blocks from sparkling new condo towers on Rockville Pike.

No answer.

“Zofo! Zofo!” he said at the adjacent tent.

Mendez unzipped the flap. Blankets, a half-gallon of milk, a propane cylinder for a portable heater. But no one inside.

A homeless man died this week when his tent caught fire a patch of woods in Rockville. Investigators believe he was trying to stay warm with a camping stove. (Dan Morse/The Washington Post)

Mendez is the head of outreach for Bethesda Cares, a nonprofit agency that works with people who are homeless. Just 10 feet from him was a stark reminder of the dangers of coping with the elements — a charred patch of ground where until early Thursday another tent had stood. The tent burst into flames, claiming the life of a man inside. Police and fire investigators are still probing but for now believe that the man accidentally set himself afire trying to warm his tent with a camping stove.

Mendez headed to find others. “This is life or death stuff,” he said.

He had two goals:

Persuade the dozen or so camp residents, or as many as he could, to go to a shelter — taking him up on his offer to call a cab and pay the fare.

And, secondly, to leverage the blizzard to bolster relationships with the men he knows and to meet those he doesn’t. Seeing him out on a day like Friday, Mendez hoped, would advance his goal of getting the men inside and into a place of their own.

“This is a good time to hit them up,” Mendez said of the cold weather. “They struggled last night.”

The Washington area has an estimated 12,000 people who are homeless, mostly in the District, according to a 2015 report by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Montgomery County had approximately 1,100 people who were homeless in 2015, an increase on the 900 who were counted the year before.

The county has several shelters and nonprofit groups that seek out people who are homeless, getting to know them and bringing them off the streets. Bethesda Cares operates on a “housing-first” model, which holds that getting people who are homeless into permanent housing is the best way for them to succeed with services that so many need: mental-health counseling, substance-abuse counseling, help getting jobs, access to health care.

It’s difficult to know how many encampments are in the county because they are hidden and transient.

For years, though, about a dozen men have lived in a thicket near Rockville Pike that weaves among older apartment buildings, auto-body shops and stores. Mendez has visited the encampment for about five years.

At 42, the former active-duty Marine, has flecks of gray in his tidy black beard and wears glasses as he makes his rounds.

At 8:30 a.m. Friday, Mendez veered from a sidewalk down a well-trodden path, stopped at Drew’s and Zofo’s tents, had no luck and kept going.

Next tent: a thick U-Haul packing blanket draped across the front and no one inside.

A third vacancy left Mendez with mixed emotions.

Maybe the men were in warmer, safer places.

Or maybe they’d headed out for the day — perhaps to panhandle, perhaps to stay briefly at a McDonald’s — but would be back to the cold.

Finally, at the fourth tent, obscured by a cover of branches and brush, two men he had never met called back to him.

They were inside, in winter coats and under blankets.

Mendez introduced himself and brought up a shelter.

“I can get you a cab if you can grab your stuff right now,” he said. “The snow is coming. It’s going to be really bad.”

A 30-year-old who gave his name as Ever stepped out and told Mendez he wanted to go. Mendez spoke into the tent, asking if his buddy wanted to come, too. He didn’t.

But from the ground and the depths of his orange parka, he said: “Thank you so much. God bless you.”

Mendez stuck with him, learned he was Eric, coaxed him from the tent until Eric emerged with a nearly frozen unopened bottle of Hoegaarden beer and told Mendez he would stay at a woman’s nearby apartment.

Eric began talking about the fire in the tent.

“My friend died, man,” Eric said, starting to cry. “My friend burned up.”

Eric said he had known the man by his nickname around the camp: “Momoño.”

Momoño worked with everyone — gathering firewood, taking group collections for a beer run.

“Always happy, laughing, cheering everybody up,” Eric said.

Eric pointed to his right, asking Mendez whether he’d been to a tent near a fence line. Mendez hadn’t, and he realized it must be a new and more obscured one.

“You gotta open your eyes,” Eric said, laughing, leading Mendez on a downward ridge where a tent was staked low. Mendez bent down and spoke into an opening. A slight man with long hair came out. He said his girlfriend was inside.

“The snow is going to be like this high,” Mendez said, holding his hand 2 1/ 2 feet off the ground. “The tents will collapse.”

The man assured him that the couple could stay at his brother’s place. His assurance, like that of Eric’s, seemed genuine to Mendez, who still made them pledge: “Promise me you will go,” he told them.

Only then did Mendez reach into his backpack and pull out gloves, hats and socks. He’d held back, hoping the cold would get him more than his one taker for a taxicab.

Mendez called a cab as they emerged toward the busy road, and he reinforced the choice.

“They’ll have showers and snacks and meals,” he told the man. “And it will be warm.”

After the cab drove off, Mendez said it had been a good morning.

He got one man out of the cold.

Others had plans, at least for the night. And if he could navigate streets on Saturday or Sunday, he’d come back out.

“I felt like we got a win today,” Mendez said.