12/10/2023 0 Comments Present time in phoenix arizona![]() ![]() “It is a very big ask for a lot of people to be involved at all – let alone longer hours,” said Cleo Warner, human services planner for the Maricopa association of governments. But across the 225 organizations participating in the so-called Heat Relief Network, most don’t often have the staff to keep their doors open after normal business hours. In Maricopa county, where Phoenix is located, local non-profits, businesses and agencies can volunteer their facilities as refuges during the warm season, which stretches from May to September. Photograph: Megan Mendoza/USA Today Network/Reuters People take shelter from the heat at the Justa cooling center in Phoenix, Arizona, on 16 July 2023. “And we know that heat continues afterwards.” “The regional heat relief network largely sees a drop in capacity at the end of business hours,” he said. Hondula added that the city is trying to find ways to keep more facilities open later, acknowledging the significant gaps that remain. ![]() “Every additional degree we add to the forecast becomes all the more dangerous.” “We know the public health risks increase exponentially with temperature,” David Hondula, the director of Phoenix’s office of heat response and mitigation, told local news crews with WSAZ. The county’s statistics also show that disparities run along racial lines. Close to 80% of deaths occurred in spaces that had nonfunctioning air-conditioning units. For those who died inside, all were in uncooled environments. Just over half of those fatalities were among unhoused residents. Heat, one of the most deadly types of disasters, is also markedly inequitable in its impact. Meanwhile, the number of heat-related deaths has risen sharply in recent years, and a record 425 fatalities were linked to the issue last year. Nights are getting hotter more quickly than days are across the US, according to the 2018 National Climate Assessment, especially in concrete-covered cities where heat is absorbed and emitted by streets and sidewalks that stay scorching at all hours. But the climate crisis has turned the dial – with temperatures only expected to spike further in the coming years – and cities like Phoenix are struggling to keep pace. Set against the arid desert landscapes of the American south-west, the Phoenix region has always been hot. “This is not a today problem,” she says, “we have seen it coming.” Champion, who also runs her own PR firm, has dedicated her career to “keeping people alive”, she says, working to ensure more utility companies couldn’t cut power during blistering summers and that more trees are planted in areas where shade is sparse.īut after years of raising the alarm on the lack of options for those left to grapple with rising night-time temperatures, she’s grown increasingly frustrated. “Heat is an insidious silent killer,” says Stacey Champion, a community advocate who has been pushing for better protections for the most vulnerable in the city she’s called home for the past 16 years. In a place where functioning air conditioning can save lives, critics are now questioning why more hasn’t been done to keep these essential facilities open late in a city that on Tuesday set a new record of 19 consecutive days of temperatures at or higher than 110F (43.3C). There’s only a single center that operates around the clock in a city of more than 1.6 million people, even as dangerous conditions grow more deadly – especially for those who can’t access overnight relief. ![]() While the city is considered a leader in mitigating the dangers of extreme heat and has worked to secure widespread access to cooling centers and hydration stations during the scorching summer days, most facilities here close before nightfall. ![]()
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