As well as the elderly and the homeless, children can be especially
vulnerable - During heatwaves, studies have shown that children under 12
months old are particularly vulnerable. Infants and small children are
more likely to die or suffer from heatstroke because they are unable or lack agency to regulate their body temperature
and control their surrounding environment. There's more information on
children's specific vulnerabilities to heat-stress…
Heat
now kills more Americans than floods, hurricanes or other natural
disasters – but cities are facing it almost entirely alone
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A fire hydrant sprays a child in Philadelphia, which along with
Baltimore has the highest rate of deaths due to hot weather in the US.
Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty
On
yet another day of roasting heat in Phoenix, elderly and homeless
people scurry between shards of shade in search of respite at the Marcos
De Niza Senior Center. Along with several dozen other institutions in
the city, it has been set up as a cooling centre: a free public refuge,
with air conditioning, chilled bottled water, boardgames and books. Last
summer a record 155 people died in Phoenix from excess heat, and the city is straining to avoid a repeat.
James Sanders, an 83-year-old who goes by King, has lived in the city
for 60 years and considers himself acclimatised to the baking south
Arizona sun. “It does seem hotter than it used to be, though,” he says
as he picks at his lunch, the temperature having climbed to 42C (107F)
outside. “Maybe it’s my age. Maybe the wind isn’t blowing. It can’t get
much hotter than this though. Can it?”
The heatwave that has recently swept the US has put 100 million
Americans under heat warnings; caused power cuts in California where
temperatures in places such as Palm Springs approached 50C (122F); and
resulted in deaths from New York to the Mexican border, where people
smugglers abandoned their clients in the desert. Further north, in
Canada, more than 70 people perished in the Montreal area after a record burst of heat.
‘King’ James Sanders at the Marcos de Niza Senior Center’s emergency cooling facility. Photograph: Joshua Taff for the Guardian
Record temperatures raise wrenching questions about the future
viability of cities such as Phoenix, where taking a midday jog or doing a
spot of gardening can pose a deadly risk. Climate change is spurring
increasingly punishing heatwaves that are projected to cause tens of thousands of deaths in major US cities in the coming decades.
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“There’s
a point where the human body can’t cool itself, which means you are
either in an air-conditioned space or you’re having serious health
problems,” says Gregory Wellenius, an epidemiologist at Brown
University. “Some places in the US will get to that point. The way we
live, work and play will be altered by rising temperatures.” Heat already kills more Americans than floods, hurricanes or other ecological disasters. That puts sweltering cities like Phoenix – where flights were cancelled last year because it was simply too hot – under growing pressure. But heat is rapidly becoming a national problem. Recent research suggests warming conditions are leading to suicides, as rising nighttime temperatures deprive Americans of sleep and respite from scorching days. A new study,
released last week, predicts that a warming climate will drive
thousands to emergency rooms for heat illness. The very hottest days
experienced in the US could be a further 15F warmer this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t curbed.
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A national plan to deal with heat, however, remains a distant
prospect, as the Trump administration attempts to demolish almost every
measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It has also outlined deep
cuts to climate programmes, and steered federal agencies away from
adapting to more frequent and more extreme weather events such as
heatwaves, flooding and stronger storms. For the most part, US cities
are facing burgeoning heatwaves on their own.
The Center for Disease Control states
that around 650 deaths occur a year due to heat but Wellenius argues
that this is too conservative, as heat isn’t always explicitly cited on
death certificates; with related mortality the total swells to around
3,500. Crucially, the death toll is afflicting US cities that haven’t
previously had to spend much time fretting about heat.
Homeless people in Phoenix try to find some shade. Photograph: Joshua Taff for the Guardian
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Research
published by Wellenius and colleagues last year found the burden of
these deaths is shouldered by unlikely places, far from the parched
cacti and canyons of the west. The relatively cooler eastern cities of
Philadelphia and Baltimore jointly have the most excess deaths due to
heat in the entire US, at 37 fatalities per million people each year, the research found.
July temperatures in Baltimore and Philadelphia have a long-term
average of around 25C; in Phoenix it’s 34C. In all three cities, as
elsewhere on the planet, the average is climbing.
Beyond setting up the cooling centres, mainly in libraries, so far the response in Philadelphia
has focused on raising public awareness, with city officials bombarding
residents with advice in English and Spanish to“Stay Cool Philly!”,
avoid the sun, drink water, and check on elderly neighbours.
“I think some of the other things people are in the west may be a
little more attuned to the issues – like don’t jog your five miles at
noon, do it at 5am,” says Dr Caroline Johnson, a senior official at the
Philadelphia Department of Public Health. “Some of that may come as a
surprise to people around here.”
Improvements in treating heat exhaustion and heat stroke mean that
spikes in hospitalisations – around 40 people were taken to hospital in
Philadelphia for heat in the first week of July – don’t necessarily lead
to a surge in deaths. But older cities in the US north east, like
Philadelphia, were built at a time when rapid change into a new climate
was virtually unimaginable.
Residents of traditionally cooler cities may need to take
the sort of heat precautions already acknowledged in cities like
Phoenix. Photograph: Matt York/AP
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Much
of Philadelphia’s older housing is packed tightly together in terraces,
with little air circulation and no air conditioning. Roofs are still
slathered in tar, rather than more expensive reflective materials,
trapping more heat. “They’re like little ovens in there,” says Johnson.
Clusters of these houses, largely found in poorer, minority
areas in the north and east of the city, can be as much as 4C (8F)
hotter than the Philadelphia average, according to city officials.
Leafier, wealthier suburbs can be as much as 7C (14F) cooler than the
average. Being poor often means hotter homes, waiting in the sun at bus
stops rather than sitting in air-conditioned Ubers, and being unable to
escape to cooler climes on vacation.
“When it gets real hot I try to keep an eye on the older residents,”
says Joann Taylor, who has lived in the largely black and Latino
district of Hunting Park for 47 years. “They don’t have air
conditioning, so I just tell them to keep the blinds closed. The houses
could do with some updates to cope with the heat.”
Philadelphia has embarked upon a mission to slash its greenhouse gas
emissions, plant hundreds of thousands of new trees, and upgrade its
parks in order to provide a haven from the warmth. But the spectre of a
particularly deadly summer – perhaps a repeat of July 1993 when 118 people died in Philadelphia due to heat – feels ominously close. Without a severe drop in emissions, Philadelphia will spend around 100 days a year above 32C (90F) within 30 years, double the number of hot days experienced in 2000.
“I think what scares me is that the projections are that things are
only going to get worse,” says Christine Knapp, director of
Philadelphia’s office of sustainability, sitting in her mercifully cool
office as the city endured the latest in a string of days over 30C
(86F).
“This heatwave is very emblematic of what we will likely continue to
have. My aunt lives in Arizona where it’s hot all the time. They set up
[Phoenix] knowing that was a desert; you go from your air-conditioned
car between air-conditioned spaces. They are hotter but they’re better
prepared than we are.”
But while Phoenix’s buildings are newer and largely air conditioned,
any power outage can cause an emergency situation. And familiarity with
the burning sun doesn’t provide any protection from it – of the 155
people who died in the Phoenix area last summer, all but three were from
Arizona.
Senior citizens in Philadelphia carry away donated fans. Photograph: Matt Slocum/AP
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“We
encounter this feeling from the populace that perhaps once you’ve
acclimated to the weather here or you’ve lived here for a certain amount
of time, you’re no longer really as vulnerable to the heat,” says Kate
Goodin, an epidemiologist at the health department of Maricopa County,
in which Phoenix sits. “Obviously, that’s not true socially or
biologically.”
Phoenix is looking to create long corridors of shade-providing treesto allow people to venture out of their homes and cars during the day.
But the future warmth will be brutal and lengthy. Maricopa County will spend
two-thirds of the typical year in heat of more 37C (100C) by the time
today’s preschoolers are drawing a pension. Further adaption will be
possible, but the ability to carve out a comfortable life in the desert
is being gradually dismantled.
Those wealthy enough to move have an escape route. Disadvantaged
communities face starker realities. “There’s some system changes that we
need to be making so that people can live within this community if they
so choose,” Goodin says.
Though the federal government is currently trying to extricate itself
from the scientific reality of climate change, at some point it will
have to deal with the societal implications of huge swathes of the
country requiring expensive modifications to support a human populace.
“It’s only a matter of time until the west is completely
insufficiently prepared for climate change,” says Brian Petersen, a
climate change and planning academic at Northern Arizona University. “If
we really wanted to be prepared we would be doing a lot of different
things that we’re not doing.
“The fact is, there’s not going to be enough refuge for everybody.” Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, and explore our archive here
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