The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: A Deadly Link Between Drug Use and Extreme Heat
Dear Diary. The city of Las Vegas is currently enduring a heatwave, which I may name Laredo for an oil company later this weekend. Over the past season 342 people in Clark County have succumbed to heat related illnesses. The tally for deaths from Hurricane Helene has been 52 so far, so heat deaths in just one western city have far exceeded those from the latest landfalling CAT4 hurricane. Yet there was little media coverage of the carnage caused by the heat in Las Vegas and for that matter Pheonix and Los Angeles this summer, just saying. Admittedly though, Helene caused property damage and more widespread misery than western heatwaves. Heatwaves are not sexy, producing low T.V. ratings so media producers and programmers steer clear of covering them, relegating most to print media.
One facet of heatwave deaths that I have not thought of is the combination of deadly heat and drug use. Apparently, those using drugs sometimes just lay in bed and vegetate, not moving to get to a safe cooler place to avoid heat stroke. Some don’t move after drug use just to get a drink of water during a deadly heatwave, particularly if they are homeless.
Here are more details from Mercury News:
Las Vegas sets heat death record in 2024 (mercurynews.com)
342 people: Las Vegas sets heat death record in 2024
Louis Lacey, director of Homeless Response Teams at Help Of Southern Nevada, speaks to homeless people at the corner of Stephanie Street and Russell Road on July 9, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS)
By Tribune News Service | Tribune News Service
UPDATED: September 27, 2024 at 11:36 a.m.
Alan Halaly | (TNS) Las Vegas Review-Journal
LAS VEGAS — Heat has claimed the lives of more people in 2024 in Southern Nevada than in any prior year on record, officials said.
The latest round of heat-related-death data from the Clark County coroner’s office, released on Thursday, shows that heat was a factor in the deaths of 342 people. It’s without question that the toll will continue to rise, especially as it can take up to 90 days to determine a cause of death — and whether heat was a factor.
Clark County began to pull out heat as a contributing factor in more deaths in 2021 when Melanie Rouse was named head of the office. It was then that the office began to look at heat as a separate contributing cause of death.
“We will inevitably see this number climb,” Rouse said in a Thursday interview.
Rouse, who based Clark County’s tracking on her experience investigating deaths in Phoenix, said she sees the country’s opioid and fentanyl crisis as inherently linked to rising heat-related deaths, as using drugs can decrease the body’s ability to regulate its temperature.
The previous record came in 2023 with 309 heat-related deaths, according to coroner’s office data. An update earlier this month placed this year’s total at 224.
This year has brought Las Vegas a record summer in many ways, made more intense by climate change, with the city experiencing its all-time record of 120 degrees. The city has seen more than 100 triple-digit temperature days — the most since 1947 — and more are expected this week, according to the National Weather Service.
Clark County even activated its cooling centers from Friday to Sunday — something usually not necessary at this time of year when summer heat will give way to a cooler fall.
“It’s like the burners are all the way on high,” said Ben Leffel, a UNLV professor who studies how cities should respond to climate change.
By the numbers
Of the 342 people who have died, the coroner’s office released the identities and death circumstances of 288 whose families have been notified.
Nearly 35 percent of those deaths relate to the use of drugs, including methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine. Drug-related deaths tend to spike in the summer months, Rouse said, underscoring an undeniable tie between drug use and extreme heat.
“We know that those drugs cause your body to not be able to thermoregulate properly,” Rouse said. “Those two things in combination are very lethal.”
The median age is 58, and many who have died had preexisting conditions such as heart disease, obesity or HIV/AIDS.
Still, heat can be deadly regardless of any of these risk factors, with otherwise healthy victims as young as 23.
Sin City’s death-dealing future
In Clark County, there’s been a concerted effort to better address heat risk as records become more easily breakable.
Much of the response thus far has come in the form of opening daytime cooling centers, triggered when the National Weather Service issues an excessive heat warning. They are often libraries or community centers where people can gather to escape heat, though academics are unsure how well used they are.
Following major heat events, the Desert Research Institute’s Southern Nevada Heat Resilience Lab regularly brings together about 90 representatives from local governments, nonprofits and community organizations to discuss short- and long-term solutions.
In the long term, both Clark County and UNLV are working to bolster tree canopy across the valley, especially focusing on areas considered “heat islands,” where foliage and green spaces needed to cool off neighborhoods are sparse.
Clark County Commission Chair Marilyn Kirkpatrick, who helped launch a public awareness campaign about heat at the beginning of the summer, said local officials are looking for ways to mitigate heat year-round.
“When these numbers come out, more people say: ‘My goodness, we’ve got to do more next year and do it for longer,’” Kirkpatrick said. “We don’t like to see any deaths.”
Leffel, the UNLV professor, said that while heat adaptation efforts are vital to Las Vegas’ long-term survival, slashing carbon emissions and slowing climate change should be a larger part of the conversation.
Comprehensive efforts to combat warming, such as the All-In Clark County plan and UNLV’s Rebel Climate Action Plan, are a step in the right direction, he said.
“Everybody is playing catch-up,” Leffel said. “You can only put so many Band-Aids on without attacking the source.”
Related Articles
- Photos: Destruction caused by Hurricane Helene
- Hurricane Helene kills at least 44 and cuts a swath of destruction across the Southeast
- Hotter summers are making high school football a fatal game for some players
- North Carolina inundated by ‘firehose’ from tropical storm
- In Montana, 911 calls reveal impact of heat waves on rural seniors
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Saturday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)