30 years later: What went wrong in the deadly 1995 Chicago heat wave, and what has changed since
Heat indices over 100 degrees kept a hold on the city for five straight days that July. In the days and months that followed, City Hall faced intense criticism for being slow to respond.
The Cook County Medical Examiner's office saw staggering numbers of heat-related deaths rising each day. Hospital emergency rooms filled up. Gov. Jim Edgar declared Cook County a disaster area.
"It was terrible," said Jeffrey Foy. "There was no air over here."
Foy lived in the since-demolished Rockwell Gardens public housing development on the city's West Side. Nearly 150 families there suffered like the rest of Chicago.
Foy used two words to describe his old third-floor apartment.
"Microwave — the oven," he said.
In mid-July 1995, temperatures topped 100 degrees for five consecutive days, then stayed in the high 90's for several more.
"Everybody in the building had their windows all the way up, curtains, back so they could get some kind of air in there," Foy said.
Foy said the fans in the building were not of much use.
"You can have the window and a door open and fan going, and you don't feel it," he said. "It was just that miserable."
The heat was uncomfortable for most, but deadly for many.
"We're really facing a heat-related disaster here," Cook County Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue said at the time. "I've never seen anything like this in the history of the Cook County Medical Examiner's office."
On an average night back then, the morgue received 17 bodies. Just on Friday, July 14, it received 87.
The Medical Examiner's office was so overwhelmed with bodies, it had to ask the State of Illinois for refrigerated trucks to store all the extra bodies.
The death toll that week topped out at 739. Most of them were elderly and who died alone, behind locked doors and sealed windows, protecting their property while jeopardizing their lives.
"You can't imagine a city doing a worse job in a crisis," said Eric Klinenberg.
Klinenberg criticized city leaders in his 2002 book, "Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago."
"The City of Chicago had a heat emergency plan on the books that summer, and they didn't even use it," Klinenberg said. "They forgot that they had it."
Seventy-three percent of the heat-related deaths were residents over the age of 65. More than half lived on the West and South sides of the city.
"The mayor was on vacation. The Health Department commissioner was on vacation. The Fire Department commissioner, who manages paramedics — on vacation," Klinenberg said. "So the B team was running the City of Chicago."
As the death count and the temperature continued to rise, Mayor Daley faced political heat as well. A week later, he formed a commission on extreme weather conditions — putting in place a new plan to better respond to emergencies.
Thirty years later, the city says practices have changed.
Kaila Lariviere is manager of emergency management services at the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications — an office that was formed just months after the 1995 heat wave, and continues to be front and center in every emergency.
Lariviere said if there is an emergency like the one seen in 1995, "We at OEMC start activating plans left and right.
"Whether I'm talking to the Fire Department to open up hydrants, whether I'm talking to the Health Department because I need to know what the census is at certain hospitals in the area," said Lariviere, "maybe I'm talking to Salvation Army, 'Hey, can you bring a canteen with extra water and food to help bring relief?'"
That collaboration with city agencies was on full display in late June 2025, as the city faced another stretch of intense heat.
"Because we now have these extreme thresholds with the National Weather Service, we can act even sooner, even quicker," said Lariviere. "Those thresholds currently stand at between 100 to 105-degree heat index for three consecutive days."
Lariviere was asked what the city has done to ensure something like the 1995 heat wave never happens again.
"I'd like to say it's because we're ahead of the curve now, and we're able to get that messaging out right away," she said. "We're better at coordinating. We're better at talking across the hallway, and making sure that we're working with the people we need to, to save our city and to the best of our ability."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Medscape
15 minutes ago
- Medscape
How to Recognize Burnout During Medical School, Residency
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Let's be real. Medical school and residency are demanding jobs, and we are going to be working way more hours than some of our peers. It is super important to take care of not only our physical health, but also our mental health during this time. Let's talk about signs of burnout and some signs that you might need to take a mental reset. Number one is chronic fatigue and poor sleep. If you're noticing that you're tossing and turning in your sleep or you are staying up with anxious thoughts and worries, this could be a sign that you are experiencing burnout. Also, if you suddenly find yourself getting sick more often than usual, it could be your body's way of telling you that you are stressed, you are in a high cortisol state, and as a result, your immune system isn't able to fight off illness as best as it can. Then, of course, there are emotional signs, too, like feeling sad, lonely, and can all be signs of early-onset depression. It is super important to recognize signs of burnout during residency and medical school because there is help if you need it.
Fox News
42 minutes ago
- Fox News
NJ flash flooding kills at least 2 after surging waters sweep up vehicle
At least two people were killed in New Jersey after flash flooding swept away their vehicle during a storm that pounded the Northeast with heavy rains, authorities said Tuesday. The two deaths happened in the northern New Jersey city of Plainfield, when the rushing waters of a brook carried away their vehicle during the height of the storm, city officials said. Their names were not immediately released to the public. In one flooded North Plainfield neighborhood, a house caught on fire and collapsed, possibly due to an explosion, not long after the family inside had evacuated, authorities said. No injuries were reported. The latest flash flooding deaths follow two other deaths that happened in Plainfield during another severe storm on July 3. "All of Plainfield grieves this latest loss," said Mayor Adrian O. Mapp. "To lose four residents in such a short span of time is unimaginable. We mourn with the families, and we remain committed to doing all we can to strengthen our emergency response systems and protect our residents from future harm." New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy declared a State of Emergency on Monday night due to flash flooding, urging residents to stay off the roads. "We're not unique, but we're in one of these sort of high humidity, high temperature, high storm intensity patterns right now," Murphy told reporters after touring storm damage in Berkeley Heights. "Everybody needs to stay alert." Relentless rain inundated parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania with over six inches of rain in a short period of time Monday night into Tuesday morning, according to Fox Weather. The resulting floods stranded numerous vehicles and made roads impassable. Emergency water rescues took place to help those trapped in the floodwater. Dozens of flights were delayed or canceled at area airports Tuesday, including 159 total cancelations at Newark Liberty International Airport, according to FlightAware data. Most flash flood watches and warnings had expired in parts of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania as the rain moved on.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Fatigue, Brain Fog And A Racing Heart — What Doctors Are Learning About Post-COVID Neurodivergence
FAIRFAX, VA- February 3 : Eve Efron, who has been struggling with long covid for nearly a year, ... More frequently has to rest on the couch in her home in Fairfax, VA on February 3, 2022. She was denied temporary disability by Mutual of Omaha from her job at a PR firm after her doctor recommended she take time off. Her symptoms include significant fatigue, brain fog, anxiety and depression. (Photo by Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images) Have you ever made people gasp by bending your knees backwards or touching your thumb back to your arm? Does your pulse race when you stand up? Do you have a history of gastric issues or irritable bowel syndrome? Are you also neurodivergent, by any chance? There is emerging, but compelling, evidence that the overlap between neurodivergence, hypermobility syndromes, mast cell activation syndrome, postural orthostatic tachycardia and dysautonomia is not a coincidence, and has a lot to do with COVID. The impact of these conditions can be severe on their own, though hard to diagnose and lacking in conclusive biomarkers. They lead to chronic fatigue, serious gastro-intestinal distress, brain fog and concentration difficulties, anxiety and depression. People drop out of the labor force, education and careers are curtailed. Prevalence rates are very hard to come by reliably, but estimates range up to 20% of the population affected by one or more of these conditions. Physicians have noticed that these diagnoses are also rising exponentially since COVID, which appears to trigger or exacerbate symptoms. An Invisible Problem Hiding In Plain Sight A special meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) in London has concluded that neurodivergent people, who are more likely to have hypermobility, connective tissue and autoimmune conditions, have been disproportionately impacted by COVID, and that this is having a significant impact on our ability to go to school and work. The rise in neurodivergence since 2020 that is placing so much strain on education and health services, the tax payer and not forgetting the individuals themselves and their families, is indeed partly due to increased awareness and more accessible diagnostic criteria – as has already been argued. However, this does not explain why these high rates of diagnosis are accompanied by such vastly increased rates of school absence and inability to work. If neurodivergent people have always existed, why are we only now so unwell that we can't work? The presentations to the RSM suggested that the effects of COVID on the brain could be contributing to the skyrocketing ADHD and Autism diagnosis waiting lists and to the absence epidemic. Since COVID we've needed to ask for help, whereas before we could fly under the radar. Some people have dropped out of work or school altogether and are now battling to have their illness recognized. Others are still attending, but battling their own bodies, trying to force themselves to work through increasing difficulties with memory, unpredictable energy levels, pain, unstable pulse rates and various allergic inflammation. Their capacity for their work has been drastically reduced, they don't know why and try as they might to get better, it's not working. They are likely to be prescribed anxiety or depression medication in primary care and go looking for psychological answers to physical problems. Indeed, many of the markers we look for in diagnosing anxiety are, in fact, expressions of our nervous system – pounding heart rate, dizziness, hot / cold flushes. It is too easy to assign symptoms to stress and very difficult to identify the connections across the whole system. The Solution Is Also Hiding In Plain Sight It has taken a mixed group of medical experts in immunology, rheumatology, cardiology, urology, psychiatry and neuro-gastroenterology to connect the dots. At the RSM, they presented clear data indicating that for people with this overlapping group of conditions, neurocognitive and emotional symptoms have indeed increased. We're not making it up! Physical symptoms that were triggered by COVID infections have lowered our tolerance for sensory sensitivity in noise, smell, temperature, texture, light, food allergens, mould and all the toxicity in our environment. People who were neurodivergent a decade ago but coping in education and careers are now too ill to do so, and the effects of neuroinflammation could tip a sub-clinical neurotype into diagnosis territory. The meeting further presented the extraordinary evidence that effective treatments for these issues are already available, such as anti-histamines, probiotics, mast cell stabilisers – simple, cheap, low risk medications which have made the difference between someone working and not working. One of the presenters, Dr Stephanie Barrett, MBChB, MD, FRCP, a Consultant Rheumatologist, reported that non pharmacological and non-invasive treatment such as repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has also been found to be beneficial. She reports: "RTMS (neuromodulation) was an extraordinary breakthrough for the treatment of depression. Now using a different protocol, we have shown that we can treat severe fibromyalgia with associated fatigue and dysautonomia, in patients who are stuck for decades in the pain/ fatigue prison. The additional challenge for our patients is 80% prevalence of neurodivergence. All the complex physical conditions and associations are treatable but they need to be recognised first. We could set up hubs with the government, at low cost to treat all these conditions and return people of all ages to education and the workforce." Each specialist presented various statistics, using many of the same treatments, indicating that a clear majority of their patients who were neurodivergent and unable to work before treatment are now back in work following an affordable protocol. Careers resumed, stories of people who feel they have 'got their life back'. Believe People When They Say They Are Ill In a country where productivity has dived since the financial crisis, and the health of the nation has not recovered from COVID, The Royal Society of Medicine are trying to understand the root causes, rather than paper over the end results. Neurodivergent people are at risk of losing their support from welfare payments due to changes to the benefits system, which could underrate the presence of multiple, mid-level symptoms, even though these all add up to a significant drain. Whilst political circles are arguing over the extent to which the population is malingering versus 'genuinely' ill, this group of physicians have come above the squabbling with a potential lever to tip the system from decline to healing. Following their proposed protocols, we can believe people who say that they can't cope, treat them and support their recovery to living a full life again. Neurodivergent people of all ages have been stopped in their tracks, creating career and educational hiatuses that cause long term damage. We are at risk of a lost generation of working age people who cannot understand their fatigue, who are trying their hardest but just cannot get moving, the more they try the harder it is (see: post-exertion malaise). If you think you might be affected by any of these conditions, take an inventory of your symptoms, however disjointed they are, and talk to your primary care physician. Even if they can't refer you to a specialist, they owe you an explanation for your difficulties, so remember to be clear about what's happening. It is so easy to write off fatigue and poor concentration as 'stress' – but stress existed before the pandemic. If your capacity has changed, and you feel like it's increasingly hard to cope with work you previously enjoyed or found easy, then this could be a physiological problem and you should speak to your doctor. Is COVID to blame for the rise in neurodivergence? The answer is complex. We have higher levels of awareness and improved diagnostic criteria. For children, we have failing schools where rigid curricula and draconian discipline disproportionately disadvantage neurodivergent children. In workplaces we have increasing demands for productivity rises and endless escalation of technology and surveillance. All this undoubtedly contributes to the absence epidemic, but all of it started before the pandemic. It doesn't fully explain the stark differences some studies showing that school absence has doubled from 2017 to 2023. The Royal Society of Medicine took some time to come at this problem from a less obvious angle, and in doing so have brought a cost effective solution into the light. It's time to stop assuming that people are lazy and time to stop putting multi-system health issues in the 'too difficult box.' As employers, as a country and as individuals with families to support, we can't afford to ignore the rising absence any longer.
