Washington: The rising heat and heat waves in the US are killing people. The rising temperature is affecting the people of Arizona the most. According to a report in the news agency AP, last summer an 80-year-old woman was found unconscious in her home when the AC of her home broke down. The woman was living without AC for several days in the suffocating heat of 37 degrees. The woman was admitted to a nearby hospital where she died.
Like the woman in Phoenix city of the hottest state in America, 77 people lost their lives due to a heat wave. In the last summer season, most of the people died of heat inside the houses. Significantly, almost all were living in houses without air conditioning. Till now, the danger bell of this heat, which was confined to Phoenix, has now started ringing in all the cities of America. Global warming is creating new challenges, especially for the safety of the elderly. From the Pacific Northwest to Chicago to North Carolina, health clinics, utilities, and local solutions are testing ways to keep older people safe as temperatures rise. Along with this, the new rule of cutting electricity is also being adopted.
Located in the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix, and its suburbs act as ground zero for deaths due to heat waves in the US. Such deaths are so common that Arizona’s largest county keeps a weekly online tally during the six-month warm season from May to October. This year the temperature reached a high of 40 degrees in the first week of April. Researcher Jennifer Aylshire, a desert city native now at the University of Southern California’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, said Phoenix really models what we’ll see elsewhere. He further said that the world is changing rapidly and he fears that we are not acting fast enough to teach people how harmful rising temperatures can be.
A 2021 study estimated that more than a third of US heat deaths each year could be attributed to human-caused global warming. Explain that in 200 American cities, there have been more than 1,100 deaths in a year due to the heat caused by climate change. Currently, several US cities including Phoenix have plans to protect people during heat waves, open cooling centers and distribute bottled water.
