Make sure to hydrate: Heat kits assembled in Phoenix before possible triple-degree weather
With temperatures in Phoenix set to hit triple digits, volunteers and first responders are working to help Valley residents find relief from heat illness.
In Maricopa County in 2024, there were 602 confirmed heat-related deaths, which was a decline from the previous year, yet a number that could still be significantly reduced, health experts and first responders said.
Hundreds of Phoenix volunteers formed an assembly line in an outdoor area outside the headquarters of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, also known as AZ Blue, on April 9, placing items like sunglasses and electrolytes into "heat relief" kits that will be distributed through Valley of the Sun United Way in Maricopa, Mohave, Pima and Yuma counties.
In two shifts, about 1,000 volunteers, employees from AZ Blue, its AZ Blue Foundation and the Phoenix Fire Department, among others, expected to assemble 15,000 heat relief kits in one day in a mass event that included multiple tables, tents and music. The AZ Blue Foundation began donating the kits a few years ago in response to a rising number of heat deaths in the community.
As the volunteers worked, the temperature rose above 90 degrees. The weather is unusually hot for this time of year, caused by a strong area of high pressure across most of the western U.S., said Gabriel Lojero, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Phoenix.
Lojero said thermometers in Phoenix could reach 100 degrees on April 10, which would be the first triple-digit day of 2025. The normal high at this time of year is about 85 degrees, Lojero said. The earliest Phoenix has hit 100 degrees in a calendar year was on March 26 in 1988, according to Lojero.
The summer of 2024 in Maricopa County marked a record-setting number of consecutive days over 100 degrees, yet it was also the first year-over-year decrease in heat deaths since 2014, according to the Maricopa County Health Department.
The decline in deaths was a sign that some of the community's heat-relieving efforts were working, said Paul Penzone, the former Maricopa County sheriff who is now communications chief for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona.
"It's a seasonal campaign that we plan on staying committed to," Penzone said of the AZ Blue Foundation's heat relief projects.
The kits complement other heat-sparing activities that will be happening in Arizona this summer, including a network of heat relief stations throughout Maricopa County, urban tree planting by the AZ Blue Foundation on Earth Day, and an ice immersion technique that the Phoenix Fire Department uses to combat what can be severe and lingering effect of heat illness.
Penzone said assembling the kits was about prevention but about awareness, too.
Preventing heat illness much cheaper than treating someone for heatstroke, which in its most severe form can cause cognitive problems and damage organs, including the brain, kidneys and heart.
And it's important to be aware that it's that time of year again when working and exercising outside is riskier, Penzone said.
State health officials say symptoms of heat exhaustion include cool, moist, pale, flushed or red skin. The skin may be red right after physical activity and the skin may or may not feel hot. Other symptoms include heavy sweating, headache, dizziness, weakness and nausea or vomiting.
"Even today, it's more than 90 degrees. I told the staff to make sure they hydrate," Penzone said. "The last thing we want is for someone to be impacted today."
As volunteers put hats, sunscreen and other items into plastic bags, members of the Phoenix Fire Department demonstrated how they put people suffering from heat stroke into a special bag that they then pour ice over to reduce patients' core temperature — an intervention they used on 311 people in 2024 and expect to use on more this summer, said Adam Kozma, division chief of emergency medical services training for the Phoenix Fire Department.
Cold water immersion: How Phoenix Fire Department will combat heat stroke this summer
People who are unhoused and living on the streets are commonly affected by heat illness, but Kozma said Phoenix Fire Department personnel routinely respond to many others who suffer from heat problems, including people living in homes without air conditioning, hikers, elderly people whose bodies are often less likely to withstand high temperatures and people who are exercising or doing activities like yardwork outside.
"We had more than 1,400 heat-related emergencies last year that we ran... We've seen some this year already," Kozma said.
The human-sized cooling bags that the Phoenix Fire Department were using to help patients suffering from heat illness have been a game changer, Kozma and other fire officials said, as they offered demonstrations to volunteers assembling the kits.
Lojero said the weather in the Valley should begin cooling down starting April 13, with highs that week in the upper 80s to early 90s.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Heat kits prepared as scorching temperatures begin in metro Phoenix
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Miami Herald
20-05-2025
- Miami Herald
‘You are not alone': Most Nevadans worry about climate change, poll shows
LAS VEGAS – In the state with the nation's two fastest-warming cities, most residents believe in climate change and think officials should do something about it, new polling has found. Answers from Nevadans rank similarly to national averages, with more widespread belief in climate change in Clark and Washoe counties, where almost 87% of the state's population resides. For instance, in the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication's poll, 63% of Nevadans said they are worried about climate change - identical to the national average. That number was 1% higher in Clark County and 6% higher in Washoe County. "If you're worried about it, you are not alone," said Jennifer Marlon, senior research scientist and director of data science at the Yale School of the Environment. "The vast majority of people are worried about it, and it's many more people than you think. We're not talking about it, because everyone thinks they're going to end up picking a fight. But, by and large, that's not true." The idea of a warming climate - and the burning of fossil fuels as the main cause - is supported by more than 99% of peer-reviewed research. It was a science nonprofit's 2025 Earth Day analysis of temperatures that designated Las Vegas and Reno as the two fastest-warming cities in the United States for the third year in a row, when comparing annual average temperatures since 1970. Yale researchers based their poll numbers on surveys of more than 32,000 people from every state and 2,379 of the country's 3,144 counties. To map the whole country by county, they used a statistical model that considers location and sociodemographic factors like political affiliations, race, gender and age. Following are the highlights: Extreme heat potent example Scientists and officials have said Nevada is ground zero for human-caused climate change, perhaps most evident in the summer when temperatures regularly stay in the triple digits, even at night. Sixty-eight percent of Nevadans agree that climate change is affecting the weather, which is 3% more than the country at large. In Clark County, extreme heat's death toll last year was 527 - higher than it's ever been because of a record hot summer and the adapting standards of the county coroner's office. Tom Albright, Nevada's deputy state climatologist and a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, is planning Northern Nevada's first extreme heat summit that will take place next month. In the absence of a coordinated response to extreme heat in the region, Albright said he hopes it can inform people and help them brainstorm ideas for local leaders. Helping find solutions for the one-third of Nevadans who aren't worried about climate change is a priority, too. Albright said using the words "climate change" or "global warming" can turn some people off because of politics - reflected in the polling results from some rural, deep red counties, where only half of the residents are concerned about it. "It doesn't matter if you call it 'global warming,' 'climate change,' 'drought' or 'extreme heat': These are issues that people experience," Albright said in an interview Thursday. "People don't talk about climate change that much, and they don't hear about it in the news as much as you might expect. They tend to underestimate the concern or interest of their neighbors." Next generation The strongest positive response the Silver State had to a question was whether schools should teach about climate change. More than three in four Nevadans feel it should be, and a similar amount of them agree that climate change will harm future generations. Dr. Debra Hendrickson, a board-certified pediatrician in Reno, is the author of "The Air They Breathe." The book is geared toward the challenges children and their parents will experience in the face of climate change, especially as it relates to air quality. Wildfire is a particular challenge in Washoe County, where smoke can come from the region's fires, as well as nearby ones from California. This year, the American Lung Association gave Clark and Washoe counties an F for particle pollution and days with high ozone levels. Whether it's extreme heat, allergies or wildfire smoke, Nevadans' health is directly tied to climate change that has made these issues more prominent, Hendrickson said. "These events that seem big and global are tied to why your kid is coughing and wheezing during a wildfire event," the pediatrician said in an interview Friday. "That's the message that people need to understand: Everybody in the state of Nevada has been affected by climate change. There's no one in the state who's been untouched by this." What Nevadans can do A broader section of the polling results focuses on policy solutions, with more than half in agreement that Congress, Gov. Joe Lombardo, local officials, corporations and private citizens should do more to address climate change. The country's transition to cleaner energy sources still remains highly popular, according to the poll. For those interested in doing something about their concerns on climate change, Hendrickson recommends taking an inventory of what in Nevadans' own lives may be contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, from the food they eat to the way they travel. Learning about local issues and solutions can be inspiring, she said, especially when residents can attend meetings for public utility commissions and city or county government. The best solution to inaction is getting educated without feeling responsible for solving the problem of climate change on a large scale, Hendrickson said. "If you can give people concrete steps that they can take, I think that really activates people," Hendrickson said. "There is such a sense of helplessness because it is such a huge problem." ___ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Los Angeles Times
01-05-2025
- Los Angeles Times
Climate change is cooking Los Angeles. Does Karen Bass care?
Los Angeles is still reeling from its most devastating wildfires ever. In the next few months, temperatures could hit triple digits. Yet Mayor Karen Bass wants to eliminate the city's climate emergency office. Yes, L.A. faces a $1-billion budget shortfall. But shutting the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office and firing five people who work to safeguard Angelenos from global warming, as Bass proposed last week, is an absurdly short-sighted plan from a mayor who has never made climate change much of a priority — especially when the savings, roughly $700,000, could potentially force the city to forfeit a $750,000 state grant. City Council members should refuse to go along with this terrible proposal. The budget cuts would undermine efforts to keep L.A. residents safe during heat waves, which at a national level kill more people than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined. Extreme heat has caused or contributed to the deaths of more than 21,500 Americans in the last quarter-century, researchers estimate, with the numbers rising in recent years as the planet heats up. Last year was the hottest on record globally. L.A.'s climate office is led by Marta Segura, the city's chief heat officer. Los Angeles is one of just three localities in the U.S. with such a job, along with Phoenix and Miami-Dade County — until now a point of pride for City Hall. Although it's unclear whether the budget cuts would eliminate the chief heat officer position — the mayor's office won't say — Bass is seeking approval to delete the language in the Municipal Code establishing the role. Either way, one of the climate office's main jobs is coordinating with other city departments during heat waves to keep people safe, especially low-income families and other vulnerable individuals, including the elderly and those without homes. If the climate office is shut down, people who don't have air conditioning or can't afford to blast it may have more trouble finding cooling centers. Some neighborhood may not have enough of those centers. In the long run, Los Angeles could lose momentum on planting trees, adding shade structures at bus stops and taking other steps to bring down urban temperatures — especially if it loses a $750,000 state grant to develop a heat action plan, which the climate emergency office is currently working to finalize. 'Should this Office be deleted, the grant would need to be forfeited,' Vahid Khorsand, president of L.A.'s Board of Public Works, warned last week in a letter to City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, as first reported by LAist. Bass' office insists that climate change is top of mind. The mayor's press secretary, Clara Karger, said in an email that despite a tough budget cycle, Bass is 'committed to her bold climate goals.' She pointed me to an Earth Day news release describing efforts to reduce pollution at the Port of L.A., expand food scrap recycling and add electric car chargers across the city, among other initiatives. She noted that Bass created a 'Climate Cabinet' of city officials, which includes an extreme heat working group. 'Climate priorities will continue as a core responsibility of every department,' Karger said. She also said that L.A. will keep developing its heat action plan, and that Khorsand's letter warning the city could lose the $750,000 state grant was misleading. She sent me a new statement from Khorsand that contradicted his previous missive: 'We do not have any indication from the State that the City would need to forfeit grant funding. Other staff in the City will be available to administer and execute the grant if it's awarded to the city.' Those are all very nice words. I hope the ones about the grant are true. But they do little to hide the plain truth. As more than a dozen advocacy groups — including Los Angeles Waterkeeper, the Center for Biological Diversity and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice — wrote in a letter to the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee, the mayor's proposal signifies 'an abdication of the leadership on climate, environmental health and justice that the City has demonstrated over the past decade.' 'Not long ago, Los Angeles was considered one of the world leaders in climate policy and action,' they wrote. No thanks to Bass. When I interviewed her ahead of the 2022 mayoral primary, I was underwhelmed. To her credit, she had released a detailed climate plan, which was a lot more than I could say for her leading opponent, billionaire developer Rick Caruso (who released no climate plan until well after the primary and declined my requests for an interview). But Bass clearly wasn't as well-versed in climate issues as several other candidates. 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If anything, Los Angeles should invest more than ever in climate and environmental justice as temperatures rise, wildfires get even worse and scientists learn more about the how unhealthy it is to breathe dirty air. Instead, Bass' budget cuts would tell the world that L.A. is no longer interested in being a climate leader — right as city officials advertise the Olympics. And as President Trump's desperate efforts to support planet-warming oil and gas leave Americans — the vast majority of whom want strong climate action — desperate for leadership. As several people have written to the City Council since Bass announced her budget proposal: 'I urge the Budget and Finance Committee NOT to attempt to fix one crisis while causing another.' Just a reminder: We've been putting out a new Boiling Point podcast every Thursday! Today's episode features a panel discussion I moderated at last week's Society of Environmental Journalists in Tempe, Ariz. We talked about the first 100 or so days of the Trump administration — and how to keep making progress on climate. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. The panelists were climate scientist Emily Fischer, California state Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), Montana-based environmental activist Anne Hedges and former federal official Nada Wolff Culver, who helped lead the Bureau of Land Management under President Biden. This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our 'Boiling Point' podcast here. For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @ on Bluesky.
Hamilton Spectator
01-05-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
Hamilton-area Today: Ties to Hells Angels + No tailgating on city property + Fun fashion from trash
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