Extreme Heat: Check On Neighbors, Isolation More Deadly - Most Likely to Die, Black, Poor, Elderly, Alone
- 'Check on your neighbors’: how isolation makes extreme heat more deadly,' The Guardian, Aug. 26, 2024. Ed. - Data shows people living alone were more likely to die in recent periods of unusually intense heat around the world. 🌅
- Hot and alone: how US cities work to protect isolated people in heatwaves.
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The dangers of extreme heat can be amplified by social isolation, experts have warned, with those living alone found to be most likely to suffer. “Heatwaves are deadly,” Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University who studies climate disasters, once said. “Cold societies make them far more lethal.” Data shows people living alone were more likely to perish in Europe’s record-breakingly hot summer in 2022 and 2021’s US Pacific north-west heat dome.
Klinenberg documented a similar phenomenon back in 1995 while covering a deadly heat event in Chicago, when temperatures soared to 106F (41C) over the span of 5 scorching days, and more than 700 people died.
During the heatwave, Black people, poor people and the elderly were most likely to die, he found – and so were people who were socially isolated, living alone and without a close social circle who could frequently check on their wellbeing. Hundreds died alone behind locked doors and sealed windows that entombed them in suffocating private spaces where visitors came infrequently and the air was heavy and still,” Klinenberg wrote in his book 2002 book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago.
Klinenberg told the Guardian that by conducting “organized outreach” to the elderly, the isolated, the chronically ill, and those without air conditioning, they can help shield people from the worst impacts of extreme heat. “City agencies can make phone calls, work with local community organizations, even ask community police officers, home health aides, and home meal delivery workers to knock on people’s doors and tell them how to stay safe,” he said.
Heat illness, he added, can be difficult to recognize in one’s own body, making isolation all the more dangerous.
“It’s hard to distinguish between ordinary heat and discomfort and truly dangerous conditions, like heat stress and hyperthermia,” he said.
“Being alone means there is no one watching you and telling you that you look like you need help. In too many cases, that help comes too late.” As heatwaves become more frequent due to climate breakdown, some cities are beginning to take these findings into account. In New York City, the health department, inspired by Klinenberg’s research, in 2020 created the Be a Buddy program to strengthen social bonds and improve public health...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/26/extreme-heat-loneliness-death
*Also [Image: UPS delivery truck. 'US delivery workers swelter in record heat – many w/out AC in vans.' Read more]