Hundreds of homeless die in extreme heat

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Hundreds of blue, green and grey tents are pitched under the sun’s searing rays in downtown Phoenix, a jumble of flimsy canvas and plastic along dusty sidewalks. Here, in the hottest big city in America, thousands of homeless people swelter as the summer’s triple digit temperatures arrive.

homeless are dying in thousands during heat waves
homeless are dying in thousands during heat waves. A_P

The stifling tent city has ballooned amid pandemic-era evictions and surging rents that have dumped hundreds more people onto the sizzling streets that grow eerily quiet when temperatures peak in the midafternoon.

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A heat wave earlier this month brought temperatures of up to 114 degrees (45.5 Celsius) – and it’s only June. Highs reached 118 degrees (47.7 Celsius) last year.

During the summer, it’s pretty hard to find a place at night that’s cool enough to sleep without the police running you off,” said Chris Medlock, a homeless Phoenix man known on the streets as “T-Bone” who carries everything he owns in a small backpack and often beds down in a park or a nearby desert preserve to avoid the crowds.

If a kind soul could just offer a place on their couch indoors maybe more people would live,” Medlock said at a dining room where homeless people can get some shade and a free meal.

Excessive heat causes more weather-related deaths in the United States than hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes combined.

Around the country, heat contributes to some 1,500 deaths annually, and advocates estimate about half of those people are homeless.

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Just in the county that includes Phoenix, at least 130 homeless people were among the 339 individuals who died from heat-associated causes in 2021.

If 130 homeless people were dying in any other way it would be considered a mass casualty event,” said Kristie L. Ebi, a professor of global health at the University of Washington.

It’s a problem that stretches across the United States, and now, with rising global temperatures, heat is no longer a danger just in places like Phoenix.

This summer will likely bring above-normal temperatures over most land areas worldwide, according to a seasonal map that volunteer climatologists created for the International Research Institute at Columbia University.

Last summer, a heat wave blasted the normally temperate U.S. Northwest and had Seattle residents sleeping in their yards and on roofs, or fleeing to hotels with air conditioning. Across the state, several people presumed to be homeless died outdoors, including a man slumped behind a gas station.

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In Oregon, officials opened 24-hour cooling centers for the first time. Volunteer teams fanned out with water and popsicles to homeless encampments on Portland’s outskirts.

A quick scientific analysis concluded last year’s Pacific Northwest heat wave was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change adding several degrees and toppling previous records.

Even Boston is exploring ways to protect diverse neighborhoods like its Chinatown, where population density and few shade trees help drive temperatures up to 106 degrees (41 Celsius) some summer days. The city plans strategies like increasing tree canopy and other kinds of shade, using cooler materials for roofs, and expanding its network of cooling centers during heat waves.

It’s not just a U.S. problem. An Associated Press analysis last year of a dataset published by the Columbia University’s climate school found exposure to extreme heat has tripled and now affects about a quarter of the world’s population.

This spring, an extreme heat wave gripped much of Pakistan and India, where homelessness is widespread due to discrimination and insufficient housing. The high in Jacobabad, Pakistan near the border with India hit 122 degrees (50 Celsius) in May.

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Dr. Dileep Mavalankar, who heads the Indian Institute of Public Health in the western Indian city Gandhinagar, said because of poor reporting it’s unknown how many die in the country from heat exposure.

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

Emergency service workers on bicycles patrol Madrid’s streets, distributing ice packs and water in the hot months. Still, some 1,300 people, most of them elderly, continue to die in Spain each summer because of health complications exacerbated by excess heat.

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

Climate scientist David Hondula, who heads Phoenix’s new office for heat mitigation, says that with such extreme weather now seen around the world, more solutions are needed to protect the vulnerable, especially homeless people who are about 200 times more likely than sheltered individuals to die from heat-associated causes.

As temperatures continue to rise across the U.S. and the world, cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, New York or Kansas City that don’t have the experience or infrastructure for dealing with heat have to adjust as well.

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

Mac Mais, 34, was among the first to move in.

It can be rough. I stay in the shelters or anywhere I can find,” said Mais who has been homeless on and off since he was a teen. “Here, I can stay out actually rest, work on job applications, stay out of the heat.

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

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

Through its warning system, nongovernmental groups reach out to vulnerable people and send text messages to mobile phones. Water tankers are dispatched to slums, while bus stops, temples and libraries become shelters for people to escape the blistering rays.

Still, the deaths pile up.

Kimberly Rae Haws, a 62-year-old homeless woman, was severely burned in October 2020 while sprawled for an unknown amount of time on a sizzling Phoenix blacktop. The cause of her subsequent death was never investigated.

A young man nicknamed Twitch died from heat exposure as he sat on a curb near a Phoenix soup kitchen in the hours before it opened one weekend in 2018.

He was supposed to move into permanent housing the next Monday,” said Jim Baker, who oversees that dining room for the St. Vincent de Paul charity. “His mother was devastated.

Many such deaths are never confirmed as heat related and aren’t always noticed because of the stigma of homelessness and lack of connection to family.

When a 62-year-old mentally ill woman named Shawna Wright died last summer in a hot alley in Salt Lake City, her death only became known when her family published an obituary saying the system failed to protect her during the hottest July on record, when temperatures reached the triple digits.

Her sister, Tricia Wright, said making it easier for homeless people to get permanent housing would go a long way toward protecting them from extreme summertime temperatures.

We always thought she was tough, that she could get through it,” Tricia Wright said of her sister. “But no one is tough enough for that kind of heat.” [AP]

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6 Comments

  1. Yeah these freaking families really care don’t they.If you cared at all you would have helped them instead of leaving them to die.Its very rare for a family member to so obstinate so irredeemable to allow them to die.I have disowned my kids with due cause.Even then there is only one I would leave to die in the heat.That one is truly irredeemable part of the termite brigade.Stinking human filth.That thing will discover the real truth when war is called on our shores.
    The rest despite the fact they hate me I would help if they asked.
    This is what happens when the family breaks down.Brought to you by a government
    who thinks they no more than you.

  2. my own relative in Maryland had a breast Ultrasounds and charge her 500.00 here insurance did not pay it… On the back of bill say apply for final assistance … My relative has 2 and and one working hard.. I did not tell her anything she is paying 40 dollars for next 15 months with interest rate… The reason i wanted her to pay attentions details and back of bills… Now should i call her and say how to get her medical bills become 0 pay or not.. I feel bad but i want them learn lessons in life!

  3. https://www.fha.com/first-time-home-buyers-program/ca-moderate-income-purchase-assistance-program
    they pay for you buy home up to 60,000 go get it buy the house..
    If you live in PA read this page no more medical bills for you or any one in USA… Same every where… Do not let them collect on medical bills they have charity funds all over USA pay for it..
    Just apply for it… wipe that medical bills now….. Before 25 Millions apply and still get it but is harder may be…
    https://www.needhelppayingbills.com/html/pennsylvania_assistance_progra.html

    Phoenix assistance section as well… here we go
    https://www.needhelppayingbills.com/html/phoenix_assistance_programs.html
    call every bill you get from Hospitals or Imaging tell them back of bill says apply for financial aids most of them.. Just apply 0 debt for medicals any where in USA… If a Mexican illegals can get so much cash and free medical why not we also eligible get it .No one preach this that because of COVID 22 is available for low income moderate to rich with BMW…. Please go to your food banks free get food even if you have BMW? We all are together late in PMT and we need not be homeless unless you want too? free electric gas and water or very discounted..
    Ask your company you are with just call them… We must stop homelessness in USA now… apply apply free free…… Medical and food stamp …
    https://www.the-sun.com/money/4461902/automatic-food-stamps-issued-thousands-of-families-this-week/
    https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/us-news/2022/01/18/61e6f90d22601d27188b4604.html

  4. I ask all those homeless people apply for food stamps 1500.00
    and plus Cash benefits and Medical fully… Some other do not know it… Now you know you should not be a homeless in USA.
    They pay your rent for next 12 months… apply it now….

  5. 114 in Phoenix? Were they having a cold period? 120 is normal. Plastic is the worse thing to use when homeless. it makes things hotter in summer and loses heat fast in winter. It adds to humidity inside, which will kill you. Cardboard is material of choice, but if covered by plastic will grow mold, which can kill. Yes, I do have personal experience.

  6. homelessness is a tough subject as some deserve to be it, some choose to be it and others are forced to be it.

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