Heat Wave on the Way

**Brigitte Bergen** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigitte Bergen, Senior Reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom, sitting in for Brian today. A dangerous heat wave is coming to the East Coast and Midwest this week, trapping tens of millions of Americans under a dome of scorching heat. Here in New York, temperatures are projected to reach the mid-90s Wednesday and may well exceed 100 degrees for most of the long weekend. And the heat index, that's what the temperature feels like to the human body when combined with humidity, could reach 110 degrees.
With our nation's 250th anniversary on Saturday and a World Cup game coming to MetLife Stadium on Sunday, New Yorkers and tourists alike will be navigating how to celebrate while mitigating their risk. And for the most vulnerable New Yorkers, the heat can be deadly.
21 New Yorkers died last summer as a direct result of heat, nearly tripling the highest total from the previous 10 years. And roughly 500 New Yorkers die every year from causes related to heat. With me now is The City Reporter Samantha Maldonado, who recently reported on last year's decade-high heat-related death toll, its climate implications and possible strategies to reduce harm. And later on, we'll be joined for a few minutes by Christina Farrell, the Commissioner of New York City Emergency Management. But first, hey Samantha, welcome back to the show.

**Samantha Maldonado** (1:38)
Hi, thanks so much for having me.

**Brigitte Bergen** (1:41)
So you reported 21 New Yorkers died from heat stress last year, and 19 of those died as a result of a single four-day heat wave in June. Why was the city so unprepared during that particular stretch?

**Samantha Maldonado** (1:56)
I'm not sure if it comes down necessarily to lack of preparedness. I think certainly one could argue that way. I think the city has gotten a lot better in recent years about notifying people, about the fact that the heat wave is coming, that cooling centers are open, all of that. This was a really interesting time in part because the election, it was the big Democratic primary, and people were out and about. That's one of the reasons I think. But also, just looking at the causes of death, people didn't have necessarily access to air conditioners.
Of the people who passed away during that spike on that one single four-day heat wave, like you said, half of the people didn't have air conditioning in their homes, and most of those people died from heat exposure in their homes. The other half, maybe they had air conditioners, but they weren't using it or those air conditioners were broken. So that's a huge reason why.

**Brigitte Bergen** (2:56)
Wow.
The forecast for this weekend predicts similar weather to what we saw during that heat wave, and with everything going on, we know people are going to be outside. Have you seen any signs that we might be better prepared this time, and some of the conditions that led to the dust last time could be mitigated?

**Samantha Maldonado** (3:18)
In some ways, I think there's more cooling centers open and more in places that are shown to be more vulnerable for heat, whether that's people who are more vulnerable because of social factors live there or because they have fewer resources in those neighborhoods. That's one good thing. I think there is an awareness now that started much earlier this heat season because of big events like the World Cup. We know there's a lot of people coming here. They are here to watch the World Cup, and people are outside just watching the game throughout the city. So I have seen definitely a little bit more preparedness and communication from city officials around this sort of heat.

**Brigitte Bergen** (3:59)
So you found that the New Yorkers most vulnerable to heat stress deaths last year were those over 60, as well as Black and Latino New Yorkers. You also reported that men were four times more likely to die from heat stress than women.
So what needs to be done to protect these higher risk populations?

**Samantha Maldonado** (4:19)
Yeah, I think a lot of these demographics sort of map on to historically more poor areas and demographics that are more socially vulnerable with less resources. And so when I talk to different kinds of people, the experts who work in these communities and study energy and security, the thing that they keep pointing to is we need actual resources, aka money, when it comes to getting air conditioners to them. It's one thing to have an air conditioner in your home, and it's another thing to be able to afford to run it. There's some programs that offer free air conditioners, like the actual units, but people won't run them if they can't feel like they can afford to pay their electricity bills.