Record-Breaking Heat Puts Most of U.S. at Risk Ahead of July Fourth

Karen Leader has lived in public housing in Brooklyn, New York, for over 30 years, so she is no stranger to the “unbearable” heatwaves that have spread across the city and her housing complex. 

But this year, the 71-year-old retiree tried to get ahead of the curve. The sticker price of $300 to $800 for a window unit was too high on her fixed income, but a city program offering free units gave her hope. 

She applied, but a week later, she was told that the city had run out. Now a massive heat wave is bearing down on her and she is once again living without protection.

This week, from the Deep South to the Northeast, more than 230 million Americans are baking under a heat wave that could shatter all-time temperature records. The “feels like” temperature will surge to over 110 degrees in more than half a dozen states, including Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, and New Jersey. 

In New York City, temperatures may reach 105 degrees.

Even overnight, temperatures are expected to be over 80 degrees for most of the country during this heat dome, a meteorological phenomenon where a large high-pressure system parks over a region, acting like a lid over a pot. 

For Black Americans, the stakes of this week’s heat dome are high. Extreme heat already kills Black people at nearly three times the rate of white Americans. This is, in part, due to decades of policy choices that concentrated Black communities in the hottest, least-resourced corners of American cities. As the climate crisis accelerates, scientists warn that heat events like this one will only become more frequent and more severe — and cities need to prepare.

“We have the assumption in our planning that everyone will know what to do — but then also will have access to the tools they would need to actually mitigate the heat,” said Joshua DeVincenzo, assistant director of applied research at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “That’s really where we’re falling short on the emergency planning side.”

In January, the nation’s largest city passed a law requiring landlords to install air conditioning for tenants who request it by 2030, but the law specifically carved out an exemption for her landlord — the New York City Housing Authority. Leader is one of more than 300,000 New Yorkers living in public housing, the vast majority of whom are Black and Latino. 

“What can you do if you can’t afford to buy one?” she said. Over the years, she has seen neighbors, both young and old, pass out from heat exhaustion and seen flare-ups related to asthma and COPD. 

“Look who’s in the majority in public housing — Black and brown people, low-income people. To say it doesn’t matter if we have AC, I think that’s a type of discrimination,” Leader said.

Since 2019, heat deaths among Black people have risen by 30%, which is five times higher than the growth among white Americans. 

Black Americans disproportionately die during heat waves

In all, as the heat dome stalls over the country, three dozen states, including hundreds of towns and cities, are expected to experience record-high temperatures.

“We know each time we come up to the late June, July season that this is going to be something that local municipalities are going to be challenged with,” DeVincenzo said. But the country hasn’t “adapted quickly enough to actually mobilize what it means to really be prepared and to respond to heat.”

The timing could not be more dangerous. The heat dome is expected to linger through the Fourth of July holiday weekend, when millions of Americans will gather outside for cookouts, parades, and fireworks. Being outside for long periods of time accelerates heat-related illness via prolonged sun exposure, physical exertion, and alcohol consumption, all of which speed dehydration. Public health officials are urging communities to reconsider outdoor plans, particularly for the elderly, young children, and people with cardiovascular conditions who are already at the highest risk.

Just last week, Europe was gripped by what scientists called its most severe heatwave ever recorded — killing more than 1,300 people. 

In the U.S., extreme heat is the deadliest form of weather. It kills more people each year than hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods combined. Every year, roughly 2,400 people die directly from heat-related sickness, but as many as 10,000 people die because of heat-exacerbated illness that isn’t coded as heat on death certificates.

When temperatures climb above 100 degrees and humidity stays high, the body is forced to work overtime. With the heart pumping more blood than normal to lower body temperatures, impacts like dehydration, blood clotting, and in the worst cases, heat stroke, organ failure, and death grow stronger.

When the temperature reach 109 degrees or higher, cardiovascular deaths can double or triple. This week, heat index readings are expected to approach or exceed that threshold across large swaths of the country.

None of this lands equally. Historically redlined neighborhoods — which remain disproportionately Black — are on average nearly 5 degrees hotter than non-redlined areas in the same city, with some cities showing differences as large as 13 degrees. That’s because these communities were systematically denied the trees, parks, and green infrastructure that cool other neighborhoods. 

A 2022 New York City health report found that Black New Yorkers died from heat stress at more than twice the rate of white and Hispanic residents, with most deaths happening indoors in homes without functioning air conditioning. 

“It’s unbearable in this old housing without AC,” Leader said.

“Our political leaders need to stand by us and stop giving us broken promises about what they’re going to do to assist public housing residents,” she added. “Once they get in office, we’re a forgotten community.”

The connection between this week’s event and the long arc of climate change is not in dispute among scientists. Heat-related deaths in the U.S. more than doubled between 1999 and 2023, with an acute rise since 2019. 

Recent heat waves were declared “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change by World Weather Attribution scientists. 

How cities are responding 

Across the country, mayors and emergency management officials are activating heat response plans — opening cooling centers, conducting wellness checks, and urging residents to stay inside during peak hours. 

In Chicago, the city has opened cooling centers citywide and moved outdoor park programs indoors, leaning on the emergency infrastructure it built after the 1995 heat wave killed more than 700 people. Detroit opened more than a dozen recreation centers and public libraries as cooling refuges, while Newark, New Jersey, declared a Code Red heat emergency and deployed its Homeless Street Outreach teams to check on unhoused residents. In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani launched real-time cooling center guidance across more than 2,200 LinkNYC street kiosks, and Boston activated its heat protection network with centers listed on a public city portal.

The message from public health officials is consistent: drink water, avoid the outdoors between noon and 6 p.m., and find air conditioning.

But for many Black Americans, that last piece of advice — find air conditioning — is not a simple ask. Research consistently shows that cooling centers are least accessible in the very neighborhoods where they are most needed. 

Communities of color face more extreme heat exposure and have fewer cooling options than predominantly white communities — and the disparities are still growing. 

A New York City comptroller analysis found that East Flatbush — a neighborhood of 162,400 people, 85% of whom are Black — had only two cooling centers during a heat emergency, one of the worst disparities in the city. Black and Hispanic households are also more likely than white households to report being unable to use their air conditioning due to cost. 

Opening cooling centers at libraries and rec centers addresses some of the gap. But centers are often closed overnight — when stifling indoor temperatures kill the most people — and many are located miles from the residents who need them most.

For residents like Leader, the official response — drink water and find air conditioning — feels like advice written for someone else. So she is doing what public housing residents have always done.

“We are neighbors,” she said. “We will check on one another, depend on one another, and make sure everyone is safe.”

Read More

• ‘We Can’t Wait’: How Black Neighborhoods Are Preparing for the Summer Heat
• How to Stay Cool During Record Heat Wave
• Extreme Heat Is Causing a Black Suicide Crisis in Phoenix. Urban Farms Offer a Lifeline

The post Record-Breaking Heat Puts Most of U.S. at Risk Ahead of July Fourth appeared first on Capital B News.