Last weekend's heat wave shows gaps in Chicago's network of cooling centers

Yahoo

8 hours ago

Record high nighttime temperatures, a dangerously high heat index and intense humidity swept through Chicago from June 21 to 23, marking the city's first major heat wave of the summer.
Ahead of the heat wave, Mayor Brandon Johnson told residents at a June 20 news conference that the city was 'prepared to demonstrate the full force of government' by offering city-run cooling centers.
The city's website promotes 288 cooling center locations across the city, which are intended to 'offer residents air-conditioned refuge' during extreme heat advisories. Of those, 110 are outdoor 'splash pads' — water features operated by the Chicago Park District that don't offer any indoor cooling space.
In addition, only two-thirds of the indoor cooling centers were open at least part of the day every day during the three-day heat wave.
'This is a lot of show, not a lot of meat,' said Monica Dillon, who works with the Northwest Side Outreach Volunteers, a group that provides support to homeless people. 'It all looks good on paper, but in reality, on the ground, it's just not working.'
Of the 178 indoor cooling centers listed on the city's website:
58 are usually closed on one or both days every weekend.
The city's 22 police stations are the only ones open 24/7, but advocates say homeless people, immigrants and people of color may not feel comfortable seeking relief at these locations.
106 close by 5 p.m. at least three days a week.
During federal holidays, most locations — including all public library branches, city college campuses and Chicago Park District facilities — close to the public even if there is a heat emergency, such as Juneteenth last year during a string of 90-degree days.
To find a cooling center near you, scroll the map and zoom using the widget in the top right corner. Click on a marker for more information on that location or filter cooling centers by category using the map legend.
From Saturday, June 21, to Monday, June 23, the heat index — a combination of atmospheric temperatures and relative humidity that determines how the heat really feels to the body — peaked at over 100 degrees each day.
According to the city, besides the splash pads, 152 cooling locations were open last weekend.
But a Tribune analysis found all 79 public libraries were only open for four hours on Sunday. Five community colleges and 27 Park District field houses were closed at least one day during the heat wave. Five of the six community centers and all 21 senior centers were closed for the whole weekend. On Monday, all of the city cooling centers were open for regular business hours.
When asked by the Tribune how many cooling centers do not have air conditioning, city officials from the mayor's office, the Office for Emergency Management and Communications, the Department of Family and Support Services and the Department of Public Health said in a joint statement: 'All facilities on the map have air conditioning.' But they did not specify which sites only had one air-conditioned room.
The Tribune visited 10 cooling centers over the weekend and found that Warren Park field house in West Ridge did not have air conditioning. Also, Chase Park field house in Uptown had only one room air-conditioned, and the King Center in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood had a ventilation system but not central air. The remaining seven were air-conditioned.
The availability of cooling resources raises questions about whether the city's network can fill the gaps in Chicagoans' needs as climate change makes heat waves hotter, more humid and longer, experts say.
According to an analysis of Cook County data by Elevate, a nonprofit that studies energy efficiency, only about 30% of single-family homes in Chicago have central air conditioning, compared with 76% of homes nationwide. Despite repeated calls from community activists for the city to expand cooling center hours and increase outreach to homeless and other vulnerable residents, resources have remained limited.
Without reliable access to a cool space to rest, heat waves can be deadly. At last weekend's news conference, Public Health Commissioner Olusimbo Ige said the city has recorded 485 heat-related deaths in the past three years, mostly affecting seniors and people with pre-existing medical conditions.
What made last weekend's heat wave especially dangerous was the record-high overnight temperatures. During the summer, temperatures in Chicago typically fall to 75 degrees or lower at night, according to Brett Borchardt, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service who spoke at the news conference. When nighttime heat indexes don't fall below this mark, the health department typically begins to see an increase in heat-related illnesses, he said.
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For context, people generally don't need cooling to be comfortable indoors when outside temperatures are under 65 degrees, according to weather experts.
From June 21 to 23, the nighttime heat index didn't fall below 80 degrees, save for one hour right after sunrise on June 23 when the index was 79, according to the weather service. The lows on June 21 and 22 broke records at 78 and 80, respectively, with Monday hitting a low of 79.
'Long-lasting exposure to heat can be really harmful for your health, and can result in things like heat stroke, disturbed sleep quality and respiratory problems,' said Paige Neri, a senior research strategist at Elevate. 'If the body's not able to cool down at night and kind of get a reprieve from the heat, then there could be compounding impacts from that as well.'
Human-made climate change is making summers in the Midwest more humid overall, even as seasonal high temperatures have rarely broken records in recent years. According to experts, sweltering summer nights, in particular, have become more common. In Chicago, while overall summer average temperatures have warmed by 1.7 degrees between 1970 and 2024, average overnight lows have increased by 2.5 degrees in that same period.
Elevate collaborated with IIT in 2023 on their study of the impact of extreme heat in Chicago homes. The average Chicago home was designed to retain heat, Neri said, and the study found that non-air conditioned homes often reached dangerously high indoor temperatures during heat waves, even at night.
During this heat wave, only 22 cooling centers were open overnight, all of which were police stations, according to OEMC's cooling center map. While the police stations often offer seating and air conditioning, many advocates said that homeless people, people of color, immigrants and other groups who have historically been targeted by the police may not feel comfortable seeking shelter at a station.
'If you're living on the street and have a complicated relationship with the police, is it really a place where you might feel comfortable and welcome?' Dillon said.
In their statement to the Tribune, city officials said they evaluate weekend and holiday options based on the 'operational feasibility' of facilities with special consideration for spaces that have existing weekend and overnight operations.
Additionally, through its five-year plan to address homelessness, the statement said, the city will consider initiatives that require larger investments across departments and sister agencies, such as 24/7 sites for weather safety.
The People's Response Network has been calling on the city to expand hours and outreach for its official cooling centers when an extreme heat advisory is issued. In a September letter sent to Johnson and the Chicago City Council, the group asked the city to implement an expanded cooling center policy, opening all cooling centers and libraries 24/7 once the heat index rises above 80 degrees. They said the city did not respond to their letter.
'Most people die at night, not during the daytime,' said Lonette Sims, chair of the network, a local group advocating for better public health infrastructure in Chicago. 'The body accumulates all the heat exposure, and for the most vulnerable populations who are elderly, children and people with health conditions, they need immediate access to cooling centers.'
Meanwhile, in suburban Cook County, three courthouses — in Skokie, Maywood and Markham — were activated as 24/7 cooling centers from June 21 to June 24 in response to the heat advisory.
According to Natalia Derevyanny, director of communications for Cook County, the courthouses provided water and snacks donated by the Salvation Army, offered cots and seating for people to rest, and even worked with the Department of Animal Control to provide carriers for people coming in with pets.
'We understand that different people might have health conditions that make being without air conditioning dangerous,' Derevyanny said. 'So we just want to ensure that these are amenities that are available to everyone as they need.'
Dillon, a retired nurse, spent most of the weekend trying to help unsheltered residents of the Northwest Side find places to cool off. She used the city's list of cooling centers to locate any in her area, and then drove around and visited each one to make sure it was suitable for her to recommend for the residents with whom she is working.
'The (Skokie courthouse) was really good, really appropriate,' said Dillon. 'If I could get everyone on a bus and just send them there, I totally would.'
The Cook County sheriff's office handled staffing for the three courthouses designated as cooling centers. According to Matthew Walberg, communications director for the sheriff's office, operating the cooling centers 24 hours a day from noon on June 21 to 5 p.m. on June 25 required approximately 300 hours of overtime at a cost of about $17,800.
Chicago's cooling center network is anchored by six community service centers. Run by the Department of Family and Support Services, they routinely offer a range of social services, from job training programs to domestic violence assistance. When temperatures reach 90 degrees or more, cooling areas are activated in these centers Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., according to the city.
Only one of these centers, located at 10 S. Kedzie Ave. in Garfield Park, was open the weekend of June 21-22 from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., expanding its cooling hours into the evening, according to an email sent out by the city. The center has, during past heat waves, remained open overnight for those needing shelter.
The other five community service centers were closed over the weekend, and some struggled to deal with high outdoor temperatures when they reopened Monday. The King Center, at 4314 S. Cottage Grove Ave., doesn't have central air conditioning and instead uses fans and a ventilation system.
According to security guard Chanel Olivas, the second floor of the building, which houses its mental health services, computer room and job center, frequently closes down during heat waves.
On Monday afternoon, when the heat index was again over 100 degrees, these second-floor offices had to close because of problems with the ventilation system. One man, who came to the center hoping to print his resume at the job center, was turned away due to the office closure.
Though a handful of people were waiting for the bus or sitting on benches just outside the King Center's doors, nobody came inside to rest in the building's designated cooling center space — a row of folding chairs in the lobby, positioned beneath a paper sign reading 'waiting area.'
In its statement, the city said the online map lists various types of cooling sites and features so residents can choose what is 'best suited for their needs.'
'The splash pads are included because they may be sufficient relief or temporary respite for certain populations, like families with children,' according to the statement.
In the absence of enough citywide cooling resources, local community leaders say they have partnered with ward representatives to step in to offer the community other options.
Public health data shows the 60620, 60623, 60628 and 60651 ZIP codes have historically seen more heat-related emergencies than other locations, Ige said during last week's news conference.
'I'm careful about using the word 'historical,'' said Ald. David Moore, 17th, whose ward is in the 60620 ZIP code. 'It seems like since I've been alderman, we haven't had any major issues — and I've been alderman for 10 years.'
The ZIP code has six indoor cooling locations, including the Englewood community service center, which operates only on weekdays; the Brainerd and Thurgood Marshall public library branches, which have limited Sunday hours; the Auburn Gresham satellite senior center, which closes over the weekends; one field house at Foster Park; and the 6th District police station. Moore said residents are welcome at church partners in the community if needed.
'We want to get them somewhere cool, even if I got to get them cool at my office,' he said.
Even in neighborhoods with more robust cooling center networks, very few residents are actually using these centers. Only 3% of Chicagoans used a cooling center last year, according to Ige. None of the cooling centers the Tribune visited had signage indicating that they were an official cooling center, and the Office of Emergency Management's map of cooling centers is only accessible online. The number of people in cooling centers visited by the Tribune ranged from zero to 10, and most visitors were there to use other services offered inside the cooling centers, such as a library or DFSS office.
'Most vulnerable populations, they may or may not have access to the internet,' Sims said. 'Language barriers can be an issue too. We want (the city) to be making sure that (information is) in Spanish and in Mandarin and Polish, and making sure that people who aren't native English speakers are aware of the cooling centers, so that they can get relief as well.'
For some residents, the cooling centers lack convenience and security. According to advocates, some Chicagoans say it feels riskier to leave home than to stay put; they worry about the security of their personal items and a lack of privacy in a communal environment.
'It's been probably 20 years since I've gone (to a city cooling center),' said Carol Vaxter, an Englewood resident. Vaxter stopped inside the lobby at Kennedy-King College on Monday afternoon to cool off during a walk with her daughter, Skye, but didn't go to the designated cooling space on the college's campus.
Vaxter's apartment doesn't have central air conditioning, so during heat waves, she tries to stay out of the house during the day. She said she doesn't necessarily mind the city's cooling centers. However, it's much easier for her to stop at places such as local gyms or fast-food restaurants — places that are reliably open, well-marked and entertaining for her daughter.
'Wherever I go, they have the air conditioning, so that's the reason,' she said. 'If I didn't have no other place to go, I would go (to the cooling centers). But when I go to other places like McDonald's, they have the air on.'