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Cold roads: Hundreds die in extreme heat

Posted on June 20, 2022 By admin No Comments on Cold roads: Hundreds die in extreme heat

By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press

Phoenix (AP) – Hundreds of blue, green and gray tents are placed under the sun’s rays in downtown Phoenix, with dusty canvas and plastic jumps on dusty sidewalks. Here, in the hottest city in the United States, thousands of homeless people melted when a three-degree heat wave hit.

Amidst the epidemic-era evictions and rising rents, the repressive tent city has become a balloon that has thrown hundreds more people into the cold streets that cool to extremes in mid-afternoon temperatures. The heat wave earlier this month brought the temperature to 114 degrees (45.5 Celsius) – and it’s only June. Last year, the high temperature reached 118 degrees (47.7 Celsius).

“During the summer, it’s very difficult for the police to find a cool enough place for you to sleep,” said Chris Medlak, a homeless phoenix man known as “T-Bone” on the street who carries all his belongings. Avoid crowds in a small bag and often in a bed in a park or nearby desert.

“If a kind soul could offer a place on his bed inside the house, more people would be able to sit,” Medlak said in a dining room where the homeless could get some shade and free food.

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Extreme heat causes more weather-related deaths in the United States than storms, floods, and hurricanes.

Across the country, heat contributes to about 1,500 deaths annually, and advocates estimate that half of them are homeless.

Temperatures are rising almost everywhere due to global warming, in some places combined with severe droughts to create more intense, frequent and long heat waves. The last few summers have been the hottest on record.

In counties including Phoenix, at least 130 of the 339 people who died of heat-related causes in 2021 were homeless.

“If 130 homeless people had died in any other way, it would have been a mass casualty,” said Christie L. Abby, a professor of global health at the University of Washington.

This is a problem that has spread across the United States, and now, with rising global temperatures, heat is no longer a threat in places like Phoenix.

According to a weather map created by volunteer meteorologists for Columbia University’s International Research Institute, this summer will bring above normal temperatures in most parts of the world.

Last summer, heat waves normally blew across temperate American Northwest, forcing Seattle residents to sleep on their yards and rooftops, or flee to air-conditioned hotels. Across the state, several people believed to be homeless died outside, including one who fell behind a gas station.

In Oregon, authorities have opened 24-hour cold centers for the first time. Volunteer teams fanned out with water and popsicles in homeless camps on the outskirts of Portland.

A quick scientific analysis concludes that last year’s Pacific Northwest heat wave was almost impossible without human-caused additions to climate change and breaking previous records.

Boston is also looking for ways to protect its diverse neighborhoods, such as Chinatown, where population density and some shade trees help keep temperatures up to 106 degrees (41 Celsius) on some hot summer days. The city plans to increase tree canopy and other types of shade, use cooling materials for roofing, and expand the network of cooling centers in the heat waves.

This is not just America’s problem. Last year’s Associated Press analysis of datasets published by Columbia University’s Climate School found that the risk of extreme heat has tripled and now affects a quarter of the world’s population.

This spring, extreme heat waves swept through much of Pakistan and India, where homelessness is widespread due to discrimination and inadequate housing. Pakistan’s Jacobabad, near the border with India, had a high of 122 degrees (50 Celsius) in May.

The head of the Indian Institute of Public Health in the western Indian city of Gandhinagar. Dilip Mavalankar said it was not known how many people died due to the heat in the country due to poor reporting.

Summer cooling centers for the homeless, the elderly and other vulnerable populations have opened every summer since the summer heat wave in 2003 killed 70,000 people across Europe in several European countries.

Emergency services on bicycles patrol the streets of Madrid, delivering ice packs and water during the hot months. Still, approximately 1,300 people, most of them elderly, die each summer in Spain due to increased heat-related health complications.

Spain and southern France spread through unusually hot weather for mid-June last week, with temperatures reaching 104 degrees (40 degrees Celsius) in some areas.

David Hondula, chief climate scientist at Phoenix’s new Office for Heat Reduction, says more solutions are needed to protect those at risk, especially the homeless, from the current extreme weather around the world, which is 200 times more than the shelter. For reasons related to heat.

“As temperatures rise in the United States and around the world, cities such as Seattle, Minneapolis, New York or Kansas City have to adjust to the lack of experience or infrastructure to deal with the heat.”

In Phoenix, officials and advocates hope the vacant building, which recently became a 200-bed shelter for the homeless, will help save lives this summer.

McMaise, 34, was the first person to enter.

“It can be bad. I live in shelters or wherever I can find them,” said Mice, who has been homeless since adolescence. “Here, I can really relax by sitting outside, working on a job application, staying away from the heat.”

In Las Vegas, teams deliver bottled water to homeless people living in camps around the county and within a network of underground storm drains under the Las Vegas Strip.

Ahmedabad, India, with a population of 8.4 million, was the first South Asian city to design a summer action plan in 2013.

Through its alert system, non-governmental groups reach out to vulnerable people and send text messages to mobile phones. Water tankers are sent to settlements, while bus stops, temples and libraries become shelters for people to escape the skin rays.

Still, there are many deaths.

Kimberly Ray Hoves, a 62-year-old homeless woman, was severely burned during an indefinite period in October 2020 on the Phoenix Blacktop. The cause of death was never investigated.

A young man nicknamed Twitch died of heatstroke while sitting in a curb next to a phoenix soup kitchen before opening a weekend in 2018.

Jim Baker, who oversees the dining room for St. Vincent’s Day charity, said he was “moving to a permanent residence next Monday.” “His mother was devastated.”

Many such deaths are not confirmed as heat related and are not always noticed due to the stigma of homelessness and lack of connection with family.

Shawna Wright, a 62-year-old mentally ill woman, died last summer on a hot street in Salt Lake City after her family said the system failed to protect her in the hottest July on record. When the temperature reached three digits.

Her sister, Tricia Wright, said making it easier for homeless people to get permanent housing would take them a long way to escape the extreme heat.

Tricia Wright said of her sister, “We always thought she was tough, that she could overcome it.” “But no one is tough enough for such heat.”

The report was co-authored by AP science writer Aniruddha Ghoshal in New Delhi and AP author Francis D’Amilio in Rome and Ciaran Giles in Madrid.

Follow Snow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/asnowreports

Read more about AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/Climate

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This content may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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