America’s hottest big city: Phoenix adapts to life in the heat
It has always been hot in Phoenix. People live through the heat, if they are fortunate, by adapting.
The Republic
When the sun rose over Phoenix a little past 5:30 a.m. on Monday, July 22, nobody yet knew the day would end as the hottest in the recorded history of the planet.
It often feels like that in Phoenix, where the sun’s unforgiving rays turn up the heat early in the morning, baking the streets and sidewalks, where people teeter on the edge of what humans can handle.
Most make it through. They adapt. Others fight to survive and some don’t, often society’s most vulnerable. In 2023, 645 people died of heat or heat-related causes in Maricopa County. By mid-August this year, 114 people had died and authorities were investigating another 465 deaths.
It has always been hot in Phoenix, America’s hottest big city. But the numbers don’t lie: It is getting even hotter, the high temperatures pushed higher by climate change, the lows rising with urban growth.
The night before that Monday was a rare moment of respite. On the evening of July 21, a storm blew through, bringing torrential rain to some neighborhoods and dusty winds to others.
After it moved through, the weather outside was no longer oppressive, though a backyard thermometer still registered triple digits.
Outsiders wouldn’t believe this. But those who live in Arizona know that a 100-degree evening, with the sun no longer beating down and an occasional breeze is, if not exactly pleasant, at least tolerable. It’s the type of night that reminds Phoenix residents that they will embrace the outdoors again when the summer ends.
It would last only a few hours.
This all unfolded in what would end as the second-hottest month on record for Phoenix, a year after the hottest month ever and during a record-smashing Southwest summer. To the west and north, as the Sonoran Desert gives way to the Mojave, heat climbed to new heights in Palm Springs and Las Vegas. July would end as Death Valley’s hottest month ever, the final week bookended by a man who burned the soles of his feet on scorching sand and another who died from hyperthermia.
No one was immune. In the week after that almost-pleasant Sunday evening in Phoenix, 63 people would die from causes suspected to be linked to the heat. Many others would be rushed to emergency rooms and plunged into bags of ice until their core temperatures returned to something approaching normal. Earlier in the month, three children died in three separate incidents: taken on a hike, brought on a boat trip, left in a car.
But through all that, life goes on.
Phoenix is the fifth-largest city in the United States and the hottest metropolis. It seamlessly borders a string of suburbs, some of them as large as other major U.S. cities, sprawling over an area as measured by the U.S. Census of some 3.6 million square miles.
People live through the heat. They work. They recreate and socialize.
They do this, if they are fortunate, by adapting. They get any outdoor exercise routines done early, right around sunrise. They seek out shaded parking spots. They meet friends inside air-conditioned restaurants and bars.
Others, by longstanding or temporary circumstance, can only hope to survive the heat. There are those whose jobs require them to be outside, directing traffic on asphalt or repairing equipment on rooftops. There are those living on the streets.
And the line between the two modes of living in the Phoenix heat can be thin. A downed power line or a flat tire can turn someone who was comfortably adapting into panicked survival mode.
The Republic chronicled one week of the heat in Phoenix, aiming to draw the full measure of what life is like in an Arizona summer. It was a week during which the high temperatures would stay around 110 each day. It was a week when each day clouds would gather on the edges of the city threatening the menace of dust storms, strong winds and drenching thunderstorms.
And it started on a day that was the hottest in the planet’s history but, in Phoenix, wasn’t even the hottest day of the month.
The Westward Ho opened in 1928 as a 16-story luxury hotel that was one of the first buildings in Phoenix to be air-conditioned.
But in 2024, it operates as federally subsidized housing for elderly people living in poverty.
Geraldine King, 92, has lived on the ninth floor for 22 years.
On Sunday evening, as the storm blew through, the power in her apartment went out briefly. But it came back on after a few minutes.
Every day, three times a day, no matter the weather, King takes herself outside, turns her walker around and uses it as a chair. She does this to stay acclimated to the temperature and because it beats sitting in her apartment alone.
“I come out here to see about things,” King said. “I look at everything that goes on.”
That morning, as the temperature hovered below 90 degrees, downtown Phoenix stirred to life. Early morning joggers took advantage of the coolest, if not cool, part of the day; dogs and their humans set out on the not-yet-searing pavement.
By 10 a.m. and nearing 100 degrees, Marcy Jones and her boyfriend packed up their tent, clothes, water jugs and documents. They decided it was time to head to a daytime shelter.
They had been kicked out of a shelter before, unwilling to separate from each other. They were hoping for a different outcome this time.
“We need each other,” Jones said, “Having him with me has changed my life. We’re finally getting things turned around.”
By the Footprint Center, where industrial air conditioning keeps thousands of basketball fans cool during summer WNBA games, two people stood under an umbrella.
They were Jehovah’s Witnesses, armed with pamphlets and a desire to promote the religion. The volunteers are a fixture in downtown Phoenix, even through the summer.
Nearby, 23-year-old Ashtyn Burbank was stationed at the valet stand of a downtown luxury apartment block. This was his second summer working the job. He figured out the importance of carrying a gallon-size bottle of water, and of taking well-timed breaks inside the air-conditioned lobby.
It was not necessarily sweater weather, but Tiffany Sendelvach waited for a bus in central Phoenix, wearing one.
“It’s kind of counterintuitive,” she said, “but it helps keep the sun off of me.”
Over the past 100 years, the average July temperature in Phoenix has risen dramatically. In the 1920s, it ranged from 89.3 to 92.7 degrees; in the past decade, it sat between 94.7 and 102.7 degrees.
Scientists say the increase in average temperature is due to human-caused climate change and the “heat island effect,” a phenomenon where solar energy is absorbed by concrete and asphalt and released at night, keeping urbanized areas hotter than their natural surroundings.
In particular, it has driven an increase in overnight lows, which often never make it below 90 degrees.
The records are climbing as fast as the temperatures. Every day of July 2023 but the last reached 110 degrees or hotter. In early July of this year, Las Vegas hit a record-breaking 120 degrees. In the California desert, Palm Springs climbed to 124 degrees and Death Valley hit 129.
And two days later, the Copernicus Climate Change Service declared Monday the hottest recorded day on Earth, with a global surface air temperature of 62.87.
In Phoenix, it reached 111. By 4 p.m., the temperature had settled at 108 degrees, and King was keeping her routine outside the Westward Ho, watching the world go by.
Her face was framed by long gray hair spilling out from underneath a black cowboy hat, a can of Coke Zero in her hand.
“This heat is unprecedented,” she said, “It’s hotter than it’s ever been.”
At 7:30 a.m., the outside temperature was 98 degrees.
Some workers piled into air-conditioned cars and drove into air-conditioned offices. Others prepared for a day spent outside.
In a north Phoenix neighborhood, election volunteers Jackson Reed and Christian Deadman, both 20, aimed to knock on 100 doors and hand out campaign material for their chosen candidate, Andrei Cherny, who was seeking a congressional seat in the late July primary election.
Reed has a special shirt that can be soaked in water, turning it into a wearable evaporative cooler. But on this day, he had opted for a Cherny campaign shirt instead.
Deadman wore a khaki sun hat with a long floppy brim covering his neck.
Deadman said there’s a sense of accomplishment knowing they hit the doors on their list. “It’s so rewarding,” he said. “It’s almost like working in construction. I can see the results of my work.”
Gerald Sandoz, the owner of AirZona HVAC, inspected an air conditioning unit outside a home in Buckeye. The homeowner reported it had been making strange sounds and had been running constantly.
Earlier in the day, Sandoz supervised a crew installing a new unit in Sun City. Afterward, he cleaned out a mold issue in Glendale. A drain pipe backed up, causing water to back up into the unit. It’s a common problem, he said, even in Phoenix’s dry heat.
“It’s that time of year for us,” he said, reflecting on the day. “Things don’t slow down. We get all sorts of crazy calls this time of year.”
Some are emergency calls about busted units. But there are also people complaining of strange smells, strange noises, or, in the most dangerous cases, of no cool air at all.
At an apartment complex near Indian School Road and Grand Avenue, the air conditioning units had been out since June, leaving residents to swelter day and night. One of them finally complained to a television station and the resulting story brought action. On Tuesday, the Arizona attorney general ordered the owner of the Buenas on 32nd complex to fix the units.
The letter gave a deadline of Friday, the end of this sweltering week.
Those working outside face more than just discomfort.
Extreme heat can bring illness, injury and death. In Arizona, most workers are protected only by a “general duty” enshrined in federal law for employers to prevent hazards that could cause severe injury or death.
Outdoor workers have 35 times the risk of dying due to heat exposure than the general population, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. And those risks are especially high for Latino workers, who are overrepresented in outdoor jobs, according to research collected by the group Moms Clean Air Force.
“Latino individuals are disproportionately represented in the outdoor workforce, which includes the farm workers, construction workers, first responders, and utility workers who make sure our day-to-day lives run smoothly,” the group said.
In Phoenix, an ordinance took effect in May requiring outdoor contractors to enact heat safety protections.
President Joe Biden has also proposed a plan to protect workers from excessive heat. It would require employers to identify heat hazards, develop emergency plans and implement standards like rest breaks and access to shade and water.
Sandoz, of AirZona HVAC, had diagnosed the problem in Buckeye: The 8-year-old unit was never installed properly. The noise was the compressor turning on and off, a sign the unit was on its last legs.
“It’s just eventually going to die,” he said. “Murphy’s Law, when they do die, it’s usually on one of the hottest days of the year when they’re working the hardest.”
A replacement was scheduled for the next week.
Regina Robles, a case manager for Phoenix Rescue Mission, pulled up at a Circle K in Goodyear, looking for one of her clients. It was 9 a.m. and the temperature was nearing 100.
Typically her work is challenging as she tries to help people through the circumstances that led them to live on the street and to navigate the unbearable heat. In the 10 months she’s been on the job, two of her clients have died.
But on this day, she was offering her client good news: He had a path out.
She found Mark Anthony Scott at the gas station, and told him that the mission would pay for him to stay for at least a week at a Best Western hotel, and then work to find him a subsidized apartment.
Scott was almost moved to tears.
He has been without secure housing for two and a half years, including a year spent living in his car.
During that time, he saw how most people in Phoenix deal with the heat. “You see them going from their car to their work air conditioning and then back home to air conditioning,” he said.
Scott didn’t have any of that. He was stuck out there.
To provide relief for those similarly stuck, the city and various nonprofits pooled resources to create respite centers around the region.
There is no restriction on who can stop in, or how long they stay. Some come in for a quick break and a cool drink of water. Others come to survive.
By lunchtime, with the outside temperature at 107, Curtis Bridgewater was lying on a cot inside the Salvation Army in Chandler, where the AC kept it at a chill 70 degrees. Bridgewater, who is homeless, comes to the center most every day to escape the brutal heat.
“The sun, it gives life,” he said, “but it will also take it as well.”
The sun beats down on everyone. But some feel it more than others.
In 2023, there were 645 heat-related deaths in Maricopa County. The deadliest month was July, when an average of 13 people died of heat every day. Close to two-thirds of those who died were age 50 and older. More than three-quarters were men. Unhoused people made up 45%.
Substance abuse is a significant factor. Methamphetamines at once generate heat and reduce the body’s ability to deal with it. Fentanyl can impair judgment and consciousness, leaving someone unable to recognize they are in a dangerous situation or to get themselves out of it.
Kids are especially vulnerable, with little agency and their bodies still developing defenses.
In an awful stretch of early July, three children died in eight days. A 10-year-old, taken hiking on South Mountain on a 113-degree day. A 4-month-old, taken boating on Lake Havasu when it was 121 degrees. And a 2-year-old, left in a hot car in Marana as the temperature climbed to 111 degrees.
Wednesday evening, a thunderstorm blew through.
In some areas, it caused havoc. A freeway was flooded. The roof of an industrial building partly collapsed, killing a 22-year-old forklift worker. Thousands temporarily lost power.
In her west Phoenix apartment, Petra Bravo Salgado, 69, was watching TV when the power went down.
She opened the sliding window. But it was still warm. “I would sleep for short spans of minutes,” she said, “but was more awake than asleep.” Her power would return at 4 a.m., ending the fitful night.
In other areas of the city, it merely rained hard for a few moments. It cooled the air to 86 degrees.
The meteorologist for KTVK-TV, Channel 3, Royal Norman, briefly went outside the studio to soak in a few drops. At his next weather update, his coifed hair was slightly damp.
The air conditioning was still out Thursday morning at Buenas on 32nd, the Phoenix apartment complex under a judicial order to get it fixed.
Meanwhile, at a construction site miles away in Goodyear, an ice cream truck pulled up and parked. It’s a weekly treat for the workers, providing a morale boost.
It was 8:30 a.m., but that was halfway through the shift for some of the 350 workers building a massive data center. Most work starts before sunrise; some started as early as 2 a.m. Some workers would start to pack up for the day by 1 p.m.
Outside the Burnidge Soup Kitchen in west Phoenix, a medical worker prepared to literally inject Salvador Ramirez Vega with cool. “Does it feel cold?” she asked her patient, who has lived on the streets on and off for the past three years.
It was the first year that Circle The City has used this technique: a liter of solution kept at 72 degrees meant to hydrate and cool people quickly.
Ramirez Vega sat with a cool towel around his neck as he received the treatment. “The sun beats you up,” Ramirez Vega said. “It drains you.”
At the Tempe Public Library, the children’s section buzzed with tykes reading, coloring pictures on computers and eating snacks. The library offers some type of activity nearly every day. It brings relief to parents like Caridad Montes, who looks for activities to keep her 4-year-old daughter, Hannaniah, busy.
They spend summer days window shopping at malls, browsing museums and snacking on pizza. Montes’ criteria for a spot is simple. “Somewhere where there’s AC,” she said.
Life in the summer revolves around air conditioning. A working unit can be the difference between a restful night and a sleepless one, between adaptation and survival.
Of the 645 heat-related deaths last year, 156 occurred inside. They happened in houses, trailers, apartment and mobile homes, but all had one thing in common: They were not cooled.
Usually, an AC was there. In most cases, it wasn’t working. In a handful of others, it wasn’t switched on, or the power was out. The average ambient temperature was 102 degrees.
Seniors were particularly vulnerable to this kind of death from heat. Almost all who died indoors were aged over 50, and most were over 65.
Just after the sun went down Thursday, the marching band for Desert Vista High School headed outside. The first half of their band practice was held inside the 70-degree gymnasium. Outside, the temperature was 96 degrees.
But a tuba player, Jerrett Bradford, 14, said he put the heat out of his mind. “Once you get in the zone of doing your practice,” he said, “you kind of just forget about it.”
The practice started just as a storm started moving through the city, bringing windy and dusty conditions. It also made the run easier for a group of joggers around Tempe Town Lake, who meet for weekly runs despite the weather.
The Red Cross set up an emergency shelter for residents in that southwest Phoenix neighborhood where the electricity was still out.
In the evening, storms passed through the East Valley, drenching select neighborhoods with large raindrops.
A handful of hikers watched the sunrise from the peak of Camelback Mountain.
They had set off around 5 a.m., trading sleep for a low of 82 degrees, a respite after a storm. The air was humid, and as one hiker scrambled the 1.3 miles to the “hump” of the Phoenix landmark, he could feel the temperature rising with his ascent.
Around 7.30 a.m., at the McDowell Sonoran Preserve in Scottsdale, a group of 13, all part of a family reunion, set off on a hike. Two and a half hours later, the Scottsdale Fire Department received a call that the trek had gone awry.
The group was lost and low on water and phone batteries. Rescue crews found them about 2 miles from the trailhead, resting in the shade of a tree.
Three children, a 10-year-old girl, an 18-month-old and a 12-month-old, along with an adult woman, were taken off the trail by firefighters and treated for heat exhaustion.
At the Buenas on 32nd complex, the landlord installed a portable chiller and declared the air conditioning “up and running.” Attorney General Mayes would say the action wasn’t good enough. The next week, she would file a lawsuit seeking penalties against the owner.
Cool air remained a distant dream for the southwest Phoenix residents who lost power in Wednesday’s microburst. By Friday afternoon, power was still out for about 150 Arizona Public Service customers.
The community had pulled together as best it could.
Chery Murillo, 64, filled the back of her truck with ice bags from an APS distribution site at a nearby elementary school and drove through the streets, handing them out to her neighbors.
The ice might help salvage food in refrigerators. Or help residents cool off for a bit.
Murillo’s household of four had been sleeping in the living room with the doors open, placing wet washcloths on their shoulders, necks and heads to stay cool. As she drove around handing out ice bags, it hit 101 degrees inside her house.
Paulina Alire, 25, took a bag of ice from Murillo’s truck.
Her family did not have anywhere to go. She, her parents and two younger siblings had been taking turns to sleep in the car to get some AC, along with their cat and dog. But they feared the battery would die, so they didn’t sleep too long.
Tracy Cade, 58, also spent Wednesday night in his car. Then it ran out of gas. On Thursday night, he stayed with his sister.
On Friday afternoon, he was sitting outside his home, back from four hours of dialysis treatment. Inside, the temperature was 96.2 degrees. Cade was waiting to see if the electricity would come back on before deciding where to sleep.
Across town, at the Arizona Burn Center in the Valleywise Health hospital, Dr. Arpana Jain was sitting in her air-conditioned office, scrolling through her phone to count her surgeries for the week.
There were five Thursday. Five on Wednesday. Same for Tuesday. Four on Monday. “So, 19,” she said, looking at her phone incredulously. “That’s just one person. Me.”
The surge was largely caused by contact burns.
The faster burned skin is carved away, the better the chances of recovery. But in the summer, the caseload can quickly exceed capacity.
“We are just barely getting by,” Jain said.
One surgery on Friday was a patient who walked on hot asphalt. Diabetes had caused nerve damage in her feet so she didn’t know her soles were burning. Another was an elderly woman who fell and sustained burns over 20% of her body.
This summer is worse than the last. There are more patients, particularly older men, with more severe burns. No one is sure why.
“It’s baffling,” said Dr. Kevin Foster, director of the Arizona Burn Center. “Don’t know.”
A third of the patients are unhoused, vulnerable to the heat radiating off sidewalks and roads.
Downstairs in the emergency room, Dr. Geoffrey Comp described a novel, if crude, heatstroke treatment the hospital has recently adopted. Patients are placed in a body bag filled with ice water.
The hospital has employed it 45 times. The Phoenix Fire Department also started using it, giving patients a “pre-cool” in the ambulance.
Comp said it works. One patient this week, whose internal temperature was past the capacity of a thermometer, was put in an ice bath in the ambulance. By the time they got to the hospital, they were responsive and moving.
However, Comp said another patient who was precooled ended up intubated and in critical condition at the hospital.
“For some people, unfortunately, at some point it just gets to be too hot out there,” Comp said.
As the day ended, the hospital kept humming with patients who had succumbed to the heat.
More than 100 homes in the southwest Phoenix neighborhood were still without power.
On Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix, a few hardy souls sat in the spacious beer garden at Arizona Wilderness brewery. Misters blasted cool spray that dissipated almost as fast as it appeared.
Inside, where the AC was pumping, it was business as usual.
The heat would not break the routine of Courtney and Jeff Ellish and their 17-year-old daughter, who began Saturdays stopping by the Uptown Famers Market on the grounds of North Phoenix Baptist Church. They were there by 8:15 a.m.
“We have our favorites that we need to eat every week,” Courtney Ellish said.
While his wife and daughter are Arizona natives, Jeff Ellish moved to Arizona from Illinois 25 years ago. He still has relatives in the Midwest who don’t understand how he can stand the heat.
“I tried to tell them,” he said, “it’s not as bad as you think.”
At the municipal pool at Eldorado Park in Scottsdale, children splashed in the pool and ran along the deck.
Graysyn-Jade Sciarani, 2, wearing a yellow life jacket, took a rare break from the pool to drink from a bottle of water nearly half her size. Her mother, Nadine-Angela Sciarani, enrolled her in swim classes this summer, her mind weighed by news stories of child drownings.
The lessons apparently took. Graysyn-Jade was barely out of the pool long enough for a slathering of sunscreen. “She’s a water baby,” Sciarani said. “She loves it.”
Some without reliable shelter sought refuge from the heat in the Phoenix Public Library. As evening began and the library closed, some moved to what was called a respite center — a room in the back that was open all night.
Lying down isn’t allowed. But people slept slumped on plastic chairs or with their heads on the tables.
Security was tight. Tempers sometimes flared. One woman was taken off the grounds after trying to smoke fentanyl near the entrance.
In Phoenix, adapting to the heat is a constant conversation.
In 2021, the city created the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, the first publicly funded heat office in the country. Its strategies include planting shade trees and installing cool pavement.
In 2024, Gov. Katie Hobbs released an Extreme Heat Preparedness Plan in response to the record-breaking 2023 summer. She appointed Dr. Eugene Livar as Arizona’s chief heat officer, the first state-level position of its kind in the U.S.
But the primary driver of heat in Phoenix remains human-caused climate change, an issue that stretches far beyond the boundaries of Maricopa County.
By the end of Saturday, some homes in the neighborhood around 35th Avenue and Buckeye that were hit by Wednesday’s storm had power restored. But some 75 people were without power for a third straight day. Adapting was fast edging toward surviving.
At last, relief.
Early on Sunday, power was restored across the southwest Phoenix neighborhood that had been sweltering since Wednesday’s storm. The last houses hummed back into life between 4.20 a.m. and 6 a.m., some 80 hours after the outage began.
The power went back on at Tracy Cade’s home at 10 p.m. on Saturday. He wasn’t there. After this dialysis treatment, he decided to spend Friday and Saturday night at his sister’s house.
“It was rough,” he said of the three days without power. “Very rough.”
A group of early risers mingled at Margaret T. Hance Park in downtown Phoenix, bringing along with them humans holding leashes.
Jetson, a Tibetan spaniel demands to go to the dog park every day at 6:30 a.m., said Patty Ann Bryant, his owner. If they skip a day, Jetson makes his displeasure clear.
Jetson was wearing a cooling jacket, a trend that spread fast through the dog park community after Ruthie, a dog named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, turned up wearing one.
“Ruthie had one, so everyone had to have one,” Bryant said.
In central Phoenix, worshippers trickled into a Catholic church for the early service. At a shaded stop in Mesa, an unhoused man waited for the bus, planning to spend his day riding it as respite from the heat.
At around 4 p.m., the temperature peaked at 111 degrees, a repeat of Monday.
It was typical of the past week, where highs had hovered around 110 degrees. Overnight lows had been heavily influenced by storms, ranging from around 82 degrees to an uncomfortable 94.
At least 63 deaths across the week would be examined by the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner to see if heat was a cause or contributor.
In a few days’ time, July would end, and the National Weather Service would confirm it was the second-hottest month ever recorded in Phoenix, with an average daily temperature of 101.1.
It was the second time in history the average monthly temperature had exceeded 100 degrees. The other was July 2023. The high temperature exceeded 100 degrees every day, pushed past 110 degrees all but six days.
As evening fell, the weather wasn’t quite done with Phoenix yet.
An hour before sunset, the wind started to pick up, sending palm fronds dancing on the gusts. The air took on a telltale haze. Piestewa Peak, one of the city’s landmark mountains, was entirely obscured.
It was yet another storm, and as it blew through, the temperature dropped seven degrees, stopping when it reached 100. This time, there was no cooling rain, only dust.
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Publish date : 2024-08-26 02:01:00
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