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They collapse while working in the sun at jobs they can’t afford to lose. People die in stifling homes, apartments and trailers they can’t afford to air-condition. State data also show that Black Californians are more likely than those of any other race to die from heat, and people over the age of 65 are especially at risk.

Like other effects of climate change, its harms fall most heavily on the poor, the infirm, the very young and the elderly. It can’t say how many people died in last year’s heat waves because it does not examine death records during severe heat waves - as authorities in Oregon and Washington did this summer after days of record-breaking temperatures.Įach year, extreme heat kills more Americans than any other climate-fueled hazard, including hurricanes, floods and wildfires, but it gets far less attention because it kills so quietly.Īs heat waves intensify, access to air conditioning can mean life or death

But the California Department of Public Health doesn’t collect that kind of real-time data. Data reviewed by The Times show heat-related hospital visits increasing in some parts of California, including Los Angeles County, for at least the last 15 years.Įxperts interviewed by The Times said an effective state response would include identifying and assisting vulnerable populations, and putting in place a surveillance system to track when and where heat-related deaths and injuries are occurring. The Times found that state leaders have ignored years of warnings from within their own agencies that heat was becoming more dangerous. Other states are moving with greater urgency to confront this public health challenge that disproportionately imperils the elderly and vulnerable.Įxtreme heat did not suddenly become a threat to Californians’ lives. All told, the analysis estimates that extreme heat caused about 3,900 deaths.Ĭalifornia’s undercount is one of the ways it overlooks the threat posed by heat waves, even as climate change delivers them more frequently, more intensely and with deadlier consequences. An examination of mortality data from this period shows that thousands more people died on extremely hot days than would have been typical during milder weather. But in a state that prides itself as a climate leader, California chronically undercounts the death toll and has failed to address the growing threat of heat-related illness and death, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation.īetween 20, the hottest decade on record, California’s official data from death certificates attributed 599 deaths to heat exposure.īut a Times analysis found that the true toll is probably six times higher. It was only after a shift change that employees found her lying on the ground.Įxtreme heat is one of the deadliest consequences of global warming. But on that 117-degree day, she was outside for hours, according to a coroner’s report, and last seen by staff while walking around the facility’s courtyard. When a second heat wave bore down roughly two weeks later, Anne Gacambi Methu’s family hoped she would be safe inside her assisted living facility in Riverside. The paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. His nephew found him that evening, lying still in the dirt driveway where he had gone into cardiac arrest. After several hours, he began to feel ill and returned home to a trailer that lacked air conditioning. 20 digging cable trenches at a mobile home park outside Desert Hot Springs in Riverside County. Seventy-three-year-old Jorge Valerio-Santiago went to work on Aug. On maps of the record heat, Southern California glowed like an ember, its normally temperate coast shaded orange, its inland cities and desert towns a deep, smoldering purple. The days brought suffering and the nights offered little relief. It was the hottest August on record in California.įor more than three weeks in 2020, back-to-back heat waves settled over the Southwest, claiming dozens of lives and leaving tens of millions of people sweltering in triple-digit temperatures. Phillips, Tony Barboza, Ruben Vives and Sean Greene