Three years ago, the Pacific Northwest experienced an unprecedented weather event. During a three-day period at the end of June 2021, a massive heat dome spanning British Columbia to Oregon enveloped Seattle, sending temperatures to a record high of 108 F — more than 30 degrees above the average. The extreme heat was so out of character for our cool climate that it felt surreal, almost like a fever dream.
However, the impacts of the heat dome were all too real. Millions of sea animals boiled to death in the Salish Sea, while nearly one third of Mount Rainier’s annual snowpack melted in a weekend. The effect on humans was just as drastic. In Washington state alone, more than 400 people died from direct and indirect heat-related causes. Emergency room visits to some Seattle hospitals were so high clinicians resorted to submerging people in bags of ice. Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia and Alberta reported similar spikes in mortality and illness. The impact on the economy was also significant: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that the Western U.S. saw losses of $8.9 billion due to heat and drought in June and July 2021.
Decades of climate research have established that, as the Earth continues to warm due to greenhouse gas emissions, extreme heat and other abnormal weather events are becoming more frequent. In a 2023 report, the UW Climate Impacts Group (CIG) estimated that, by 2080, Western Washington will experience an average of 20 to 48 days of extreme heat every year; before 2021, the average number was three days per year. Extreme heat days are defined as those when temperatures exceed 90 F for at least two days in a consecutive three-day period.
In the aftermath of the 2021 heat dome that took both authorities and laypeople by surprise, public health professionals, climate scientists, activists and community members have been busy working to prepare Seattle for the next big heat wave. While extreme heat poses a substantial danger, they say much can be done to improve emergency responses and strengthen community resilience so that those most at risk of illness and death are better protected.
Recognizing structural vulnerabilities
According to JJ Edge, an emergency preparedness planner at Public Health–Seattle & King County, anyone can become susceptible to heat-related illnesses. But some people are at higher risk, including young children and infants, elders and people with chronic illnesses. Prolonged exposure to extreme heat, especially in the presence of high humidity, is dangerous to all humans.
While some people are made vulnerable due to physiology, others have increased risk of heat illness due to environmental factors, such as occupation and physical accommodations. Unlike in other parts of the country, buildings in Seattle are generally designed to withstand the rain and cold, but not extreme heat. In 2019, the American Housing Survey and American Community Survey reported that only 44% of households in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties had air conditioning (AC), compared to 79% of Portland households and more than 90% of homes in New York City. After the heat dome in 2021, the percentage of households in the Seattle area with AC increased to 53%; the 2023 edition of the survey has not yet come out.
The lack of active cooling particularly affects low-income residents, who are on average 8% less likely to have AC than the general population. Oftentimes, they live in older homes or apartment buildings, which have poor heat insulation. In some cases, landlords can contribute to this disparity by discouraging AC usage to reduce electricity bills.
Kat Smith, a disabled activist who used to live unsheltered in an RV, moved into a subsidized apartment in Ballard in March 2023. While their building, run by the nonprofit Plymouth Housing, has a central ventilation system, it does not extend to the units. Smith said their lease agreement included a clause dissuading tenants from using AC.
“I’m in a southwest corner apartment with three walls of windows,” Smith said. “It is literally an uninhabitable nightmare without a portable AC unit.”
The risk of extreme heat is even more acute for people experiencing homelessness. According to Edge, unhoused people are the population at the highest risk for heat exposure.
Chanel Horner, a community organizer with Stop the Sweeps, lives in a bus in Georgetown with her 8.5-month-old puppy, Wiley.
For the past month, Horner and about a dozen other people have lived along the busy arterial East Marginal Way South in the heart of an industrial district. She said Seattle’s Unified Care Team (UCT) routinely sweeps vehicle residents with little to no notice, sometimes impounding people’s homes. This issue has intensified by nearby businesses placing concrete blocks along the sides of streets to prevent homeless people from parking. In one instance, a business owner placed 84 concrete blocks on a single street. Real Change previously reported that the UCT conducted more than 2,800 sweeps of unhoused people’s vehicles and encampments in 2023.
The net effect is a policy that has, according to Horner, pushed vehicle residents to the least inhabitable corners of the city. Unlike many of her housed neighbors, Horner does not have regular access to AC. Ever since her bus was briefly impounded in fall 2022, she has had to struggle to keep it operational enough so she can move from place to place. In order to keep cool, she tries to park in an area with shade and also uses a portable generator to run a fan.
Smith recounted their experience surviving the 2021 heat dome while they were living in an RV with their service dog George.
“It’s like being in an Easy-Bake Oven,” Smith said. “Especially if it’s a metal roof.”
At the time, Smith had just received their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and was too ill to leave their vehicle. Smith said that if they hadn’t received cold water from mutual aid volunteers, they might not have survived the heat.
In 2022, King County began developing an extreme heat mitigation strategy, which identified heat islands that retain more heat due to extensive pavement and lack of vegetation. These areas include downtown Seattle, the Kent-Auburn corridor and the Duwamish Valley, where Horner lives. A full report with policy recommendations is expected by the end of this summer.
Strengthening community resilience
Another group of people at high risk for heat exposure are those who work outdoors, such as landscapers, construction workers and farmworkers. Edgar Franks, the political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) — a union that represents about 500 Indigenous Mexican migrant farmworkers in Skagit County — said the agricultural industry is grueling. During harvest season, workers toil from dawn to dusk with limited breaks and often receive pay that is effectively below the minimum wage. They brave the elements, facing cold rain in the winter and wildfire smoke in the autumn.
During a heat wave in the summer of 2017, 28-year-old Honesto Silva Ibarra passed away while working on a blueberry farm in Sumas, a city in northern Washington. Silva Ibarra, who also had diabetes, requested breaks numerous times but was denied. Four other workers were also treated for heat exhaustion. More than 70 workers went on strike to protest against Silva Ibarra’s treatment and were subsequently fired by the owner, Sarbanand Farms. Franks said the incident catalyzed a movement to fight for climate protections for farmworkers.
“Up until that moment, we did not know anything that existed but at least could give any protection for workers for either wildfire smoke or heat,” Franks said. “There was really nothing in the books that we could point to and say, ‘Look, workers that are outdoors all day need these protections to stay alive.’”
Since the 2021 heat dome and due to increased wildfire smoke, the fight for labor climate protections has only intensified. FUJ petitioned Washington Labor and Industries (L&I) to better protect outdoor workers, holding rallies and participating in meetings with regulators. Finally, in June 2023, L&I adopted permanent rules requiring employers to provide water, shade, breaks and other accommodations for farmworkers when temperatures exceed 80 F. L&I also adopted more limited rules in December, requiring employers to provide N95 respirators to outdoor workers when wildfire smoke creates hazardous air quality levels.
This summer is the first time these new rules will be activated. Franks said that while he is proud of the changes FUJ advocacy has won, L&I could go further. He also said he is not sure how the department will enforce the rules to ensure growers are informing workers of their rights at non-unionized farms. Franks hopes employers will not discipline workers for taking breaks that are guaranteed under state law during extreme heat events.
“In the past, if you asked for a break, they would fire you almost on the spot,” Franks said.
Jason Vogel — the interim director of CIG who co-wrote the organization’s report on extreme heat — said governments and people can take action to better prepare and mitigate the impacts of heat waves like the 2021 heat dome. CIG’s recommendations include improving public communication, converting more community spaces to be climate resilient, transforming urban environments by planting more trees and building shade canopies, setting better building standards that require active cooling, and passing more worker protections.
To implement these changes, Vogel said Washington could establish a new office or appoint a “heat czar” dedicated to coordinating action between various local, state and federal governmental agencies.
“Each of these other entities has a role to play, but they don’t have that public health mandate,” Vogel said. “That’s our big challenge: How do we try and get all of these various actors to move toward making public health outcomes better?”
Edge said creating a culture of community care is important so that people actively reach out to their neighbors and loved ones who might be more vulnerable.
“We’re in a place now where not only are we seeing [the impacts of climate change] — and we’re seeing it so consistently — but people are talking about it more regularly,” Edge said. “Let’s put in some of that climate health safety information as well … because it’s impacting all of us. We need to be able to make those connections to … the broader support we’re giving each other, because it’s going to be happening, for heat, every summer and longer.”
Public Health has released a number of useful tips on its website to help people stay cool without AC, like insulating windows to keep the heat out and placing ice behind a fan so that the evaporation augments its cooling effect.
Fighting for climate justice
Just like extreme heat poses an increased risk to certain groups, so does climate change as a whole. This disparity has led to the development of a concept known as “climate justice,” in which communities who are most impacted by the disruptions of the climate crisis receive the most attention and resources to help adapt and transition to a clean energy economy.
In Seattle, the same neighborhoods that are considered heat islands also face more air pollution and socioeconomic barriers. Akiksha Chatterji, 350 Seattle campaigns director, said climate justice means funneling investments to the most impacted communities first, such as by converting community centers into resiliency hubs with adequate ventilation systems.
“[It means] making sure that the investments that we do make are serving communities that have been historically marginalized and are going to be impacted by these issues first and worst,” Chatterji said. “Their priorities are the ones that really need to be uplifted and put front and center.”
Chatterji added that this prioritization means supporting tenants and workers who come from Black, Indigenous and other communities of color.
One example Chatterji pointed to was how, as part of their labor contract, workers at the sandwich shop chain Homegrown recently won hazard pay for working in the kitchen during heat waves.
For Horner, climate resiliency involves ending punitive approaches to homelessness and instead providing good housing for people living in vehicles.
“Jail’s not a solution,” Horner said. “They can keep towing our RVs, but they’re never going to get rid of us.”
With the Supreme Court of the United States’ June 28 decision on Johnson v. Grants Pass [see page 3], which allows cities to punish homeless people for sleeping outside, Chatterji said the stakes are even more dire.
“I think it’s absolutely devastating from a justice perspective — we’re not moving forward. This is a huge step backward,” Chatterji said. “I feel like we’re just going to see more of that now, where folks get pushed around; they’re more exposed to the elements and less connected to resources.”
While existing inequalities and oppression make communities less healthy and more prone to the effects of heat waves, Vogel said the opposite is also the case: When communities are made more resilient and healthier in the face of extreme heat, that has cascading positive effects on dealing with other climate justice issues.
“If you follow the other road, which is like, ‘But look at all these solutions!’ … we see places where folks have innovated and done something that actually is helping save lives,” Vogel said.
“I think if you focus on solutions, you end up with a pretty positive story around how, no matter how complex the problem is, humans have proven that we are able to innovate and address complex issues — even for populations that are particularly vulnerable.”
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. He handles coverage of our weekly news stories. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
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