Mexican farmworker Avelino Vasquez Navarro did not have air conditioning in the mobile home he died in last month in Washington state when temperatures soared into the hundreds of degrees.
For the past 12 years, the 61-year-old has spent most of the year working near Pasco, Wash., sending money to his wife and daughters in Nayarit state on Mexico’s Pacific coast, and traveling every Christmas.
Now the family is raising money to bring his remains home.
“If this RV had air conditioning and was running, it would likely have helped,” said Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGarry, who determined Vasquez-Navarro’s death was heat-related, with alcohol intoxication as a contributing cause.
Most heat-related deaths involve homeless people living outdoors. But those who die indoors without adequate cooling are also at risk, and are usually older than 60 and living alone. with limited income.
confirm that inequality About Energy and Air Conditioning Access Summer is getting hottermany victims Black, Native or Latinolike Vasquez Navarro.
“Air conditioning is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Mark Wolf, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents state energy assistance programs. “It’s a public health issue and an affordability issue.”
People who live in mobile homes or older trailers and recreational vehicles are especially vulnerable to lack of proper cooling. Nearly a quarter of indoor heat deaths in Maricopa County, Arizona, last year occurred in such dwellings, which are turned into smoldering tin cans by the scorching desert sun.
“Mobile homes can get very hot because they don’t always have the best insulation and are often made of metal,” said Dana Kennedy, AARP’s director in Arizona, where many heat-related deaths occur.
research Mobile home residents are particularly at risk in sweltering Phoenix, where temperatures can reach 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius), the study shows. climate forecast For this weekend.
“People are exposed to the elements more than other types of housing,” said Patricia Solis, executive director of the International Business Review. Knowledge exchange for resilience At Arizona State University, he worked on maps drawing Hot weather affects mobile home parks for a long time State preparedness plan.
Worse, some parks are barring residents from making modifications that would cool their homes, citing aesthetic concerns. A new Arizona law this summer required parks for the first time to allow residents to install cooling devices like window units, awnings and curtains.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, home to Phoenix, 156 of 645 deaths due to heat Last year, incidents occurred indoors in unrefrigerated environments. In most cases, the unit was present but not operating, was without power or was locked, according to public health officials.
One of the victims was Shirley Marie Coplin, who died after being overcome by extreme temperatures inside her mobile home in Phoenix, Arizona. hot wave When the extension cord that supplies it with electricity was disconnected.
Emergency responders recorded the 70-year-old widow’s body temperature at 107.1 degrees Fahrenheit (41.7 degrees Celsius). Coplin, who suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure, was taken to the hospital where she died.
Coplin appeared to be struggling financially, if the dilapidated condition of her mobile home is any indication. The house still stands on Lot 60, surrounded by a chain-link fence, a locked gate and a dirt driveway overgrown with weeds.
It is unclear how the wire was disconnected, whether Coplin had an electricity account or how she got electricity.
“Losing your air conditioner is now a life-threatening event,” says Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University who grew up in hot, humid Houston in the 1970s. “You didn’t want to lose your air conditioner, but it wasn’t going to kill you. Now it is.”
Regulated utilities in Arizona have been banned from shutting off power during the summer since 2022, after a 72-year-old woman died in 2018 after Arizona Public Service cut off her power over a $51 debt.
“Due to privacy concerns,” the company could not say whether she had an account at the time of her death or in the past, said Anne Porter, a spokeswoman for Arizona Public Service, which supplies electricity to homes in the park where Coplin lived. Porter said the company does not shut off power from June 1 to Oct. 15.
Cut-offs can occur after these dates if accumulated debts are not paid.
Arizona is among 19 states with blackout protections, leaving about half of the U.S. population unprotected against power outages during the summer, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association said in a report. New study.
Nearly 20% of extremely low-income households don’t have air conditioning at all, especially in places like Washington state where they weren’t commonly installed before climate change-induced heat waves became stronger, more frequent and longer lasting.
In the Pacific Northwest, several hundred people died during the 2021 heat wave, prompting Portland, Oregon, to launch program Providing portable cooling units to vulnerable low-income people.
Chicago, known for its cold winters, experienced a heat wave that killed 739 people, mostly elderly people, over five days in 1995. Amid high humidity and temperatures that exceeded 100 degrees (37.7 Celsius), most of the victims did not have air conditioning or were unable to operate their units.
In 2022, Chicago adopted a building cooling ordinance after three women died in their apartments in a senior living building on an unusually warm spring day. Some apartment buildings must now have at least one common area air-conditioned for cooling when the heat index exceeds 80 degrees (26.6 degrees Celsius) and individual units are not cooling.
Nonprofits in historically hotter areas like Arizona are also trying to address the inequality that low-income people face during hot summers. The Phoenix-based community agency Forest fires Executive Director Kelly McGowan said the organization recently raised money to purchase more than $2 million worth of air conditioning equipment to help 150 families across the state over three years.
Laws protect tenants in some places. Phoenix landlords must make sure air conditioning units cool to 82 degrees (28 degrees Celsius) or below and evaporative coolers lower the temperature to 86 degrees (30 degrees Celsius).
In Palm Springs, California, and the desert city of Las Vegas, there are laws requiring landlords to provide air conditioning in rental homes. Dallas, where temperatures can exceed 110 degrees (43.3 degrees Celsius) in the summer, has a similar law.
But most renters pay their own electricity, leaving them to worry about whether they can afford to run the cooling or set the thermostat to the highest setting.
New report Estimates The average cost of heating for U.S. households from June to September is expected to rise 7.9% nationwide this year, from $661 in 2023 to $719 this summer.
Wolf noted that the federal government Low Income Home Energy Assistance ProgramThe Economic Assistance Program, which gives money to states to help families pay for heating and cooling, is underfunded, with 80% of it going to heating homes in the winter.
At the Coplin mobile home park, there was little interaction between Spanish-speaking neighbors and “Mrs. Shirley,” who used a walker to take her two small dogs outside. Neighbors said the animals were adopted after her death.
The couple were buried In North Phoenix at the National Memorial Cemetery in Arizona next to her husband, J.D. Coplin, who died in 2020.
“We will never forget,” reads their shared sign.
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