Statistics and sociological analysis from Eric Klinenberg’s Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. I strongly recommend it.
In 1995, from Wednesday July 12 through Friday July 14, temperatures in the city of Chicago climbed to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius). On Thursday July 13, the high temperature was 106 F (41 C). The heat index (how hot it feels) reached 126 F (52 C). Opening our windows did nothing to cool down apartments.
Temperatures stayed in that range for three days in a row. People without air conditioning sprayed water from fire hydrants they opened. Those with transportation looked for public spaces with AC. People became sick from the heat and called ambulances that quickly became overwhelmed. And hundreds of people died in their homes, unable to cool them down, without transportation to go somewhere else, and with no one to check on them and help.
The final count of heat-related deaths was 739 people, in three days.
I lived in a second floor apartment of a walkup building (stairs, no elevator). It was my second year living in Chicago. Having lived in California and upstate New York, I had learned that no matter how hot it got, temperatures went down in the evening.
I was completely unprepared for that heat wave. Temperatures didn’t go down, even at night. It was only because I had shul on Friday evening that I didn’t end up in a lot of trouble. Members of the congregation saw my symptoms of heat exhaustion and had me lie down and hydrate. A member of the synagogue let me stay in her air conditioned condominium that night.
Photo by Phil Greer, Chicago Tribune
The First Responders
When people started calling 911 with heat-related emergencies, ambulances couldn’t respond fast enough, leading to big delays.
The city began sending fire personnel to pick people up, but the hospitals became overwhelmed and had to stop accepting patients. At one point, ambulances were driving from hospital to hospital to find one that wasn’t completely full.
From Klinenberg’s book:
According to an Illinois state senate report, “With 23 hospitals on bypass status at various intervals during the period July 13-16, 1995, very few, if any hospitals on the South and Southeast sides of Chicago were available to accept patients delivered by emergency ambulance.”
Chicago had preventive care programs and disaster management, but they didn’t understand that the coming heat wave would need any of that. When hospitals and emergency responses became overloaded, the city government was slow to call in help and mostly never did.
When people started dying, there was effectively no 911 help because that staff was focused on the living. Police officers ended up picking up bodies and bringing them to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. When that office’s 222-bay holding capacity ran out, the owner of a meat-packing company offered nine huge refrigerated trucks that were parked in the parking lot.
For days after temperatures cooled a little, the death count rose.
The City’s Response
The city government didn’t see how serious the heat wave was going to be, and then was slow to recognize the catastrophe it was turning into. Once it understood, its focus was mostly on how bad they were going to look.
Mayor Daley two weeks after the disaster. Photo: Brian Bahr/AFP/Getty Images
The mayor in 1995 was Richard M. Daley. His administration had been working hard on improving Chicago’s image so it could attract more businesses and increase tourist visits. He very much wanted to present a smooth-running city that listened to its people. Public image was critical to him.
First, the Daley administration denied that the heat was really causing that many problems. When that story crumbled, they denied how high the numbers were of people that were dying. When they couldn’t keep that up, they insisted that those numbers weren’t all heat-related.
Daley was furious with Chief Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue for talking about how many had died from the heat, but when experts from around the country and the Centers for Disease Control confirmed the number of heat deaths, Daley maintained there was nothing the city could have done because it couldn’t control the weather.
The Press Coverage
The press would have been critical in getting out the story of what had gone on behind government office doors, and out in the city, especially in the areas populated by large numbers of Black residents, elderly residents and those living in poverty. But they were limited by their own focus – hooking readers and selling papers – and processes, such as writers in the field not being the ones who finished the final copy before it was published. Those closest to the facts of the reporting were also not part of the decision to run a story on the front page or in the middle of the paper.
Cook County morgue technicians work between a row of refrigerated trucks. AP Photo: Mike Fisher
Some reporters worked for months on an in-depth story that uncovered just where the city had failed, but it was never published because editors didn’t think people wanted a story about summertime in late fall.
What Really Went Wrong
Klinenberg spent years talking to families of the deceased from those days, first responders, and people who had worked in the government and the media that summer. He found that the real problem wasn’t the heat. It was the neglect.
The areas with the highest rates of heat-related deaths were predominantly Black neighborhoods. Elderly residents were vastly overrepresented relative to their numbers in the general population, with the most vulnerable being senior residents living alone. And many more solo elderly men died than solo elderly women, mainly because women usually have more skills in staying socially connected.
Klinenberg quotes people who believe only a fraction of those who died between July 13 and 16 would have died if the city had had certain programs and services in place, especially for older people who live alone. These are some of the factors the city should have addressed long before that summer:
- Establishing a network that keeps isolated seniors in touch with others who can make sure they have what they need.
- Strong senior community centers serving as pipelines for health information and other critical information.
- Social programs and dedicated staff to manage aging populations instead of expecting that of fire and police departments where staff didn’t want to do “soft service work.”
- The Chicago Housing Authority providing air conditioning in the common areas of its public housing buildings and doing a better job of keeping its senior housing
- safe.
- City government more focused on serving the population instead of marketing their image.
- Less distance between the most marginalized communities and City Hall. As the system stands, more affluent constituents who know how to “work the system” get what they want far more than people with few resources and no training in how things work downtown.
- Revitalization programs for neighborhoods like North Lawndale that used to be active with grocery stores, commercial businesses and places people congregated to socialize. Changing economic conditions have left empty properties, few places to buy food, and empty lots that are used by dangerous people who need to keep their commerce under cover. These neighborhoods need renewed infrastructure and revitalized commercial areas.
An active neighborhood brings out people who live alone, connecting them to families, churches and neighbors. Those ties are critical in a crisis.
Lower income people are more politically vulnerable. Elderly are more physically vulnerable. Klinenberg’s research showed that instead of working to listen to these populations and provide what they need, Chicago focuses on those with the most money and the loudest voices. It runs as a business more than as a civil body that serves its people. Klinenberg published his book in 2002 and showed that the true tragedy of the 1995 heat wave was that it showed the considerable and tragic flaws of the city’s infrastructure and political dynamics. Sadly, the city of Chicago still hasn’t given its most vulnerable residents the attention and services they badly need. Infuriatingly, it probably never will.
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