Extreme heat
Low-income areas most affected
PHOENIX — Extreme temperatures like the ones blistering the American West aren’t just annoying, they’re deadly.
The record-breaking temperatures this week are a weather emergency, scientists and health care experts say, with heat responsible for more deaths in the U.S. than all other natural disasters combined. With more frequent and intense heat waves likely because of climate change and the worst drought in modern history, they say communities must better protect the vulnerable, like homeless people and those who live in ethnically and racially diverse low-income neighborhoods.
“This heat has an important effect on people and their health,” î said Dr. Suganya Karuppana, chief medical director at the Valle del Sol health clinics in Arizona.
People — and plants and animals — need cooler temperatures at night to recover from the stress of high heat, scientists and doctors say. But with overnight temperatures in the 90s, that’s not happening.
Karuppana noted that many people she sees may have no car and have to take public transportation in the Phoenix heat, walking through neighborhoods with few trees and waiting at bus and light rail stops with no or little shade. Some people live in poorly ventilated mobile homes or without air conditioning. Or they may work outside in the sun as construction workers or landscapers.
Phoenix has been baking in temperatures above 115 degrees all week. The high Friday hit a record 117 degrees after breaking another Thursday at 118 degrees. Daily records also were set this week across the U.S. West, such as Nevada and California, including 128 degrees in Death Valley on Thursday.
Those who are vulnerable to high temperatures include the very young, the very old and people with heart or kidney disease, ailments that disproportionately affect communities of color.
Phoenix and other local governments around the Southwest remind people to drink lots of water, stay out of the sun if possible and take frequent breaks on hot days. They warn people to not leave children or pets in vehicles, and they work with nonprofits like the Salvation Army to open cooling facilities.
The rising risks of the heat became painfully clear three years ago when 72year-old Stephanie Pullman died at her Phoenix-area home after Arizona’s largest electric utility turned off her service for failure to pay $51. A coroner listed “environmental heat exposure” î as one of the causes of her 2018 death.
It led to a series of moratoriums on overdue electrical bills in Arizona that continued through the end of last year amid the coronavirus pandemic. The utility says it has suspended disconnections and waived late fees through Oct. 15.
Heat-related deaths in Maricopa County have been rising dramatically in recent years, with 323 reported last year, the highest ever recorded. The highest rates were reported among Black people and Native Americans. About 80 percent of those who died were men.
People living on the street are especially at risk. The Maricopa County medical examiner has said heat was a primary or secondary cause in the death of 146 homeless people last year, when the summer was the hottest ever recorded in Phoenix.
A study last month estimated the number of heat deaths each year that can be attributed to human-caused global warming. It included about 200 U.S. cities and found more than 1,100 deaths a year from climate change-caused heat, many of them in the East and Midwest, where many people don’t have air conditioning or are not acclimated to hot weather.