There is no doubt that extreme heat has made national headlines this year, not just in California or even the United States, but around the world. And while the Golden State has had a respite, this will not last. According to experts, this condition is here to stay, so there is an urgent need to advance resilience to extreme heat and actions to mitigate the impacts.
During a media session organized by Ethnic Media Services, the director of Governor Gavin Newsom's Office of Planning and Research's Extreme Heat and Community Resilience ProgramBraden Kay noted that it's really important to understand that: heat, death, illness from extreme heat impacts, they're not just happening in the headlines on the days that they're happening, these health impacts are happening all summer long.”
Even, he said, we are starting to see heat-related impacts occurring in the winter.
“What we know in general is that climate change is making extreme heat more frequent, more severe and longer lasting.”
Kay said summer heat waves can be dangerous, especially for young children, the elderly, people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, outdoor workers, the homeless and pregnant women.
“We have to understand that extreme heat is something that is happening not just in the summer, but throughout the summer, spring and fall, and it affects California communities not just on those hot days,” he said.
“I think one of the challenges of climate change is that it’s not just change. It’s chaos. And what chaos means is that it’s not a linear path that every summer is going to be hotter. It’s going to be very unpredictable as to what kind of weather we get and when we get it,” he added.
Braden Kay stressed that “climate change doesn’t just mean climate change, it means ascending chaos, which means unpredictable change, which means sometimes it’s going to be colder and sometimes it’s going to be hotter. What we know about what the future holds is that it’s going to get warmer and warmer. It’s not necessarily going to get windier every summer, it’s going to get hotter and hotter, but the general trend is that it’s going to get warmer and warmer.”
Given this, he said, it is important to fight against misinformation, because although some will think that climate change is no longer a problem because it has been a cooler summer, that will not be the case, so he called for finding more precise information in the National Meteorological Services and other resources such as state agencies, including the California Department of Public Health.
For Dr. Maggie Park, a San Joaquin County Public Health Services officer, as the weather becomes more unpredictable, so do its impacts.
San Joaquin County is a mix of urban and rural areas with a population of about 750,000 people. Eighty-eight percent of the county is rural, but only 8 percent of the population lives in rural areas.
14.5 percent of its residents live in poverty. The county's public health department is located in Stockton, and every year as summer approaches, emergency preparedness and communications teams disseminate routine messages about summer safety.
“Public health is prevention. And heat-related illness and death are preventable, so we do a lot of education and a lot of practical advice,” Park said.
While there are obvious messages like: keep the air conditioning on, wear protective clothing, stay hydrated, Park said it's important to repeat them over and over again.
The Central Valley is already known for being hot, he said, but this year has seen record-breaking temperatures. People had already experienced the first hottest July on record, when Stockton hit 109 degrees.
“Public health is about prevention, but it is also about health equity,” she said, adding that low-income neighborhoods and communities with a higher African-American, Hispanic and Asian population experience significantly more urban heat than wealthier, predominantly white neighborhoods.
This, he said, is because poor and minority groups live in areas with more buildings, more concrete, higher population density, less vegetation, fewer trees and fewer surfaces that absorb heat.
So, “even within a city, the heat burden is not shared equally. We do everything we can to get into those communities and reach those who are most at risk, such as the elderly, people with chronic illnesses or disabilities, pregnant women, infants and young children.”
He added that San Joaquin County’s homeless population faced unique challenges during the heat waves. According to a 2022 point-in-time count, there are 2,319 homeless people in the county, 1,355 of them unsheltered.
“We know that these people really don’t want to leave their tents and all their belongings to go to a cooling center. It doesn’t really work for them. The staff goes out to teach them. And we go into their spaces to give them valuable lessons on how to store food properly. How to avoid storing dairy and eggs and the proper disposal of raw food,” she said.
Added to this are tasks such as frozen water bottles and mobile shower units. However, she said, language barriers are a challenge.
There are many people in the San Joaquin Valley who work in agriculture, and many of them are immigrants, so they rely on their community partners to provide them with information and to make sure they don't work extra hours in the heat, drink plenty of water, and wear protective clothing.
“But getting materials and education translated into their indigenous languages is a constant challenge. And it is not just the language that is important, but also the message we convey to the public, which must be clear,” he added.
Dr. Ines Ruiz Houston, vice president of the League of United Latin American Citizens Council 2060 in Stockton, California, said that public health must be worked on with the public community, since it is key to the success of the strategies.
In this regard, he said that correct messaging in multiple languages is necessary through social media, door-to-door communication, special events, and using public health services.
“Having troops on the ground is the most effective method,” Ruiz-Huston said. “Families are afraid to turn on the air conditioning because of the cost of electricity or power outages,” she said.
She explained that it is also crucial who you reach out to when it comes to keeping a community safe: “Flyers are not enough. What is? Find the talkers who represent your neighborhood. The person who knows everything about the community is the first to tell everyone what is going on.”
Patrizia Hironimus, executive director at the Butte Environmental Council, said the particular challenges in her county, which has large populations of both wildfire survivors and college students, with the extreme heat campaign have centered around a socioeconomic equity lens, trying to bring a climate-awareness that students can employ in their rented apartments or shared housing.
The expert added that the best way to reach displaced wildfire survivors from resilience resources like air conditioning has been through resources like food pantries and farmers markets.
“Most of the extreme heat that affects the majority of our population is in the area of food sovereignty. I think we’re in a border county here in Butte, so it’s hard enough to get fresh produce and fruit up to the burn scar area. We have a mobile market, through the Butte County Local Food Network, and some of this extreme heat will exacerbate our already strained food distribution routes.”
“So, going forward, I think our disaster preparedness summits need to plan for the food distribution element of how this climate is affecting our patterns of getting food to people,” he explained.
Susan Henderson, executive director of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about one in four people in the U.S. has some form of disability.
A large portion of that number are older people, he noted, so nearly all of us are aging with disabilities. “When we create access for disabled people, we also create access for older people and, frankly, for everyone.”
Henderson explained that disabilities can be invisible and dynamic. However, they have intersecting functional needs, while there are attitudinal barriers towards older people without disabilities as well as those with disabilities.
But what are some of the challenges that disabled people face in extreme heat situations? Safe, accessible and air-conditioned housing, she said.
In addition, accessible transportation was provided when it was necessary to get from their homes to cooling centers or health centers along with their mobility devices.
“For people with disabilities, electricity and power supply are critical. And especially during times of extreme heat and wildfires and other natural disasters, because many of us rely on medical devices and air conditioning that need power to keep us well and alive,” Henderson said.
Finally, the experts agreed that it is necessary to create a real awareness about the effects of climate change and the repercussions that will occur if we do not pay attention to actions that help protect people. Given this, they said, it is necessary to change the perspective and mentality to protect the community in the face of climate disasters.
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