25 years later amid pandemic, echoes of a deadly heat wave
ByAdriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
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In 1995, a devastating heat wave hit Chicago, Illinois, from roughly July 12-16. The city might see a similar heat wave in 2020.
Derrick Robinson stood in the blistering heat at the "Ground Zero" of the 1995 Chicago heat wave. One body after another was carted into the morgue on Harrison Street -- a shocking sight for the 25-year-old, who was a relatively new photojournalist at the time.
From July 12 to July 15, temperatures in Chicago felt like they were in the triple digits, and the heat was made overwhelmingly unbearable by humidity and the heat-retaining concrete elements of the city.
Robinson, a photographer and transmission technician who operated the live truck for the Chicagoland Television, had spent hours in front of the morgue as the station reported on the heat wave.
"I've never seen anything like it in my life," Robinson told AccuWeather in a phone interview. "Ground Zero was the morgue on Harrison Street on the west side of Chicago in the medical district, and body after body after body coming into that morgue. I'll never forget it was just endless... endless. It was so bad it was like, you got tired of shooting it."
Adding to the problem of the heat was widespread power outages spread across the city as people turned up air conditioners, leaving more than 8,000 customers without power or cool air. In an effort to stay cool, as many as 3,000 people illegally opened fire hydrants, causing a severe water pressure strain throughout the city, WBBM's Sylvia Gomez reported at the time. Children filled the streets, playing in the water and desperately trying to stay cool in the deadly heat.
The heat became so overwhelming that busloads of children were overcome by the temperatures as they returned from a field trip. At least 11 were taken to the hospital for treatment. Some firefighters brought out hoses to cool off some 40 heat-exhausted people outside the Jackson Park Field House at the Southside, Lester Holt, who now anchors NBC's Nightly News broadcast, reported for WBBM as the heat wave escalated.
Three daily high records were shattered as the mercury soared to 97 degrees on July 12, 104 degrees on July 13 and 100 degrees on July 14.
Chicago's Midway International Airport also reached 106 degrees on July 13, making it the hottest day during the blistering heat wave. Chicago typically has high temperatures in the mid-80s during the month.
An estimated number of 739 people died during the 1995 Chicago heat wave, most of whom were elderly residents. The death toll underscored the dangers posed by extreme heat.
"Heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the United States, resulting in hundreds of fatalities each year. In fact, on average, excessive heat claims more lives each year than floods, lightning, tornadoes and hurricanes combined," according to Changon et al. at the State Climatologist Office for Illinois.
In 1995, there was a lack of uniform standards for determining a "heat-related death," Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist and scholar of urban studies culture and media told the University of Chicago Press. Edmond Donoghue, the Cook County chief medical examiner at the time, used "state-of-the-art criteria" to report 465 heat-related deaths for the week and 521 heat-related deaths for the entire month.
Still, the mayor at the time, Richard M. Daley, underestimated the deadly effect of the extreme heat.
"We all have our little problems, but let's not blow it out of proportion. It's hot," Daley said, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Workers at the Cook County morgue in Chicago wheel a body to refrigerator trucks on Tuesday, July 18, 1995. Several trucks were parked near the morgue to handle an overflow of bodies, most believed to be victims of the heat wave. (AP Photo/Mike Fisher)
Medical examiners nationwide had confirmed Donoghoue's heat-related death criteria were scientifically sound and had endorsed his findings, according to Klinenberg. However, the estimate of 739 deaths comes from the "excess death" rate, which is an accounting of the difference between reported deaths and the typical deaths for a given period of time.
"According to this measure, 739 Chicagoans above the norm died during the week of 14 to 20 July -- which means that Donoghue had been conservative in his accounts," Klinenberg said.
The people most affected by the heat wave, Robinson said, were the African-American communities.
"I think it affected the city as a whole. It was just kind of disproportionate, and I think it affected a lot of the African-American residents," Robinson recalled.
Of the estimated 739 fatalities, more than 70% of the victims were over 65 years old, and African-American mortality rates were roughly 1.5 times higher than the white mortality rate, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago.
A Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from Aug. 11, 1995, using Donoghue's number of 465 heat-related deaths, found that 229 (49%) of the people were Black, 215 (46) of them were white and 21 (5%) had been from other racial or ethnic groups. However, Klinenberg points out the disparity in the mortality rate.
"The actual death tolls for African Americans and whites were almost identical, but those numbers are misleading," Klinenberg said. "There are far more elderly white than elderly African Americans in Chicago, and when the Chicago Public Health Department considered the age differences, they found that the black/white mortality rate was 1.5 to 1."
Autopsy technicians move bodies into refrigrated trucks at the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office Monday, July 17, 1995, in Chicago. Bodies were backed up outside the morgue throughout the weekend and Monday as the heat-related death toll may climb as high as 300 after several days of brutally hot weather. (AP Photo/Charles Bennett)
"In both Chicago and Milwaukee, the National Weather Service issued warnings of the developing heat wave several days in advance, which were quickly broadcast by the local media," Sullivan said. "Given this advance warning, many, if not all, of the heat-related deaths associated with this event were preventable."
Robinson remembered the forecasters at Chicagoland Television covering the heat wave in advance but couldn't recall any preparations made by the city.
"I can't remember anything, any dire warning, saying to stay inside," Robinson said. "But, like I said, the city itself was not prepared, especially with its elderly residents or its poor residents."
City officials did not release a heat emergency warning until July 15 -- the last day of the heat wave.
According to the disaster survey from the National Weather Service (NWS), the heat wave had been so unusual that it was not immediately recognized as a public health emergency.
"Unfortunately, a heat wave connotes discomfort, not violence. Inconvenience, not alarm," Sullivan said.
The refrigerated semi-trucks, originally purposed as food distribution trucks, that came to hold the number of bodies the morgue didn't have the space to hold reframed the heat wave for many Chicagoans. The heat wave of 1988 was still fresh in the minds of many, including Robinson, but there had been one weather factor that made the 1995 heat wave deadlier than the last.
Cook County morgue technicians work between a row of refrigerated trucks outside the morgue on Tuesday, July 18, 1995, as the city of Chicago continues to deal with the rising death count from the recent heat wave to hit the area. At least 199 lives have been claimed by the hot humid temperatures. (AP Photo/Mike Fisher)
The dew points in the heat wave were in the upper 70s to lower 80s, according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Nicole LoBiondo. The NWS defines a dew point temperature as the temperature to which the air would need to be cooled at a constant air pressure to create a relative humidity of 100%. After that point, the air would not be able to hold any more moisture as a gas, so either precipitation or fog would occur beyond that point.
"In addition, a general lack of wind added to the overall withering effect of the record heat and the very high humidity levels, elevating temperatures to what today would contribute to AccuWeather RealFeel® Temperatures in excess of 120 degrees," Lundberg said.
And it wasn't just extreme heat during the daytime. No relief was felt during the night due to a localized weather phenomenon.
"These dew points made it oppressively humid during the day outside, and temperatures were exacerbated at night due to the 'urban heat island' effect in the city," LoBiondo said.
The "urban heat island" concept refers to the factoring in of a high concentration of buildings, parking lots and roads in cities that tend to absorb the heat during the day then radiate it at night. Temperatures during the nights of the heat wave lingered in the upper 70s to lower 80s, providing little relief when the sun had sank below the horizon.
The fatality numbers caught officials off guard, overwhelming the system. Ambulances became unavailable, hospitals filled to the breaking point and funeral homes even had trouble picking up the bodies. Later on, finding an organist for a funeral was a task in itself, according to then-Chief Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue. The city had to call in refrigerated food trucks to store some of the bodies.
"It was certainly epidemic levels," Donoghue told WGB News.
Chicago's summer of 2020 is on track to be hotter than the summer of 1995, which the NWS considers the second-warmest summer on record. Chicago's average temperature from June 20 to July 13, 2020, has been 78.8 degrees, which is 5.9 degrees above average. In comparison, Chicago's meteorological summer of 1995 averaged 75.2 degrees, which is 2.2 degrees above average.
"As bad as the 1995 heat wave was, this disaster is worse," Donoghue told WGN News, referring to the current health crisis and reasoning that people can't escape the virus the way survivors escaped the heat and the health care workers involved can also be endangered.
A grim lesson from the 1995 heat wave prompted Cook County to take over a refrigerated warehouse to hold up to 2,000 bodies 25 years later in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic during the summer of 2020.
Like the heat wave of 1995, systemic health and social inequalities have put some racial and ethnic minority groups at an increased risk of getting COVID-19, the CDC statists reported in June. The CDC found that both Black and Native American or Alaska Native people are five times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people. Latinx people are four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people.
The city has reacted to change how the local government responds to heat waves. Since the heat wave of 1995, Robinson said, there has been a change from the city, including cooling centers opening in extreme heat and warming centers during the wintertime. Still, it had been a heavy lesson to learn.
Robinson was at the front of the morgue for news coverage for as long as 12 hours in a day that July. He and the crew would report on the death toll from the heat wave for about three weeks as families came to identify loved ones.
"I just remember seeing bodybag after body bag after body bag," Robinson said.
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News / Weather News
25 years later amid pandemic, echoes of a deadly heat wave
By Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
In 1995, a devastating heat wave hit Chicago, Illinois, from roughly July 12-16. The city might see a similar heat wave in 2020.
Derrick Robinson stood in the blistering heat at the "Ground Zero" of the 1995 Chicago heat wave. One body after another was carted into the morgue on Harrison Street -- a shocking sight for the 25-year-old, who was a relatively new photojournalist at the time.
From July 12 to July 15, temperatures in Chicago felt like they were in the triple digits, and the heat was made overwhelmingly unbearable by humidity and the heat-retaining concrete elements of the city.
Robinson, a photographer and transmission technician who operated the live truck for the Chicagoland Television, had spent hours in front of the morgue as the station reported on the heat wave.
"I've never seen anything like it in my life," Robinson told AccuWeather in a phone interview. "Ground Zero was the morgue on Harrison Street on the west side of Chicago in the medical district, and body after body after body coming into that morgue. I'll never forget it was just endless... endless. It was so bad it was like, you got tired of shooting it."
Adding to the problem of the heat was widespread power outages spread across the city as people turned up air conditioners, leaving more than 8,000 customers without power or cool air. In an effort to stay cool, as many as 3,000 people illegally opened fire hydrants, causing a severe water pressure strain throughout the city, WBBM's Sylvia Gomez reported at the time. Children filled the streets, playing in the water and desperately trying to stay cool in the deadly heat.
The heat became so overwhelming that busloads of children were overcome by the temperatures as they returned from a field trip. At least 11 were taken to the hospital for treatment. Some firefighters brought out hoses to cool off some 40 heat-exhausted people outside the Jackson Park Field House at the Southside, Lester Holt, who now anchors NBC's Nightly News broadcast, reported for WBBM as the heat wave escalated.
Three daily high records were shattered as the mercury soared to 97 degrees on July 12, 104 degrees on July 13 and 100 degrees on July 14.
Chicago's Midway International Airport also reached 106 degrees on July 13, making it the hottest day during the blistering heat wave. Chicago typically has high temperatures in the mid-80s during the month.
An estimated number of 739 people died during the 1995 Chicago heat wave, most of whom were elderly residents. The death toll underscored the dangers posed by extreme heat.
"Heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the United States, resulting in hundreds of fatalities each year. In fact, on average, excessive heat claims more lives each year than floods, lightning, tornadoes and hurricanes combined," according to Changon et al. at the State Climatologist Office for Illinois.
In 1995, there was a lack of uniform standards for determining a "heat-related death," Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist and scholar of urban studies culture and media told the University of Chicago Press. Edmond Donoghue, the Cook County chief medical examiner at the time, used "state-of-the-art criteria" to report 465 heat-related deaths for the week and 521 heat-related deaths for the entire month.
Still, the mayor at the time, Richard M. Daley, underestimated the deadly effect of the extreme heat.
"We all have our little problems, but let's not blow it out of proportion. It's hot," Daley said, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Workers at the Cook County morgue in Chicago wheel a body to refrigerator trucks on Tuesday, July 18, 1995. Several trucks were parked near the morgue to handle an overflow of bodies, most believed to be victims of the heat wave. (AP Photo/Mike Fisher)
Medical examiners nationwide had confirmed Donoghoue's heat-related death criteria were scientifically sound and had endorsed his findings, according to Klinenberg. However, the estimate of 739 deaths comes from the "excess death" rate, which is an accounting of the difference between reported deaths and the typical deaths for a given period of time.
"According to this measure, 739 Chicagoans above the norm died during the week of 14 to 20 July -- which means that Donoghue had been conservative in his accounts," Klinenberg said.
The people most affected by the heat wave, Robinson said, were the African-American communities.
"I think it affected the city as a whole. It was just kind of disproportionate, and I think it affected a lot of the African-American residents," Robinson recalled.
Of the estimated 739 fatalities, more than 70% of the victims were over 65 years old, and African-American mortality rates were roughly 1.5 times higher than the white mortality rate, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago.
A Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from Aug. 11, 1995, using Donoghue's number of 465 heat-related deaths, found that 229 (49%) of the people were Black, 215 (46) of them were white and 21 (5%) had been from other racial or ethnic groups. However, Klinenberg points out the disparity in the mortality rate.
"The actual death tolls for African Americans and whites were almost identical, but those numbers are misleading," Klinenberg said. "There are far more elderly white than elderly African Americans in Chicago, and when the Chicago Public Health Department considered the age differences, they found that the black/white mortality rate was 1.5 to 1."
Autopsy technicians move bodies into refrigrated trucks at the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office Monday, July 17, 1995, in Chicago. Bodies were backed up outside the morgue throughout the weekend and Monday as the heat-related death toll may climb as high as 300 after several days of brutally hot weather. (AP Photo/Charles Bennett)
Kathryn Sullivan, the leader of the national disaster survey team that investigated the event and former National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chief scientist, believed much of the loss of life could have been prevented.
"In both Chicago and Milwaukee, the National Weather Service issued warnings of the developing heat wave several days in advance, which were quickly broadcast by the local media," Sullivan said. "Given this advance warning, many, if not all, of the heat-related deaths associated with this event were preventable."
Robinson remembered the forecasters at Chicagoland Television covering the heat wave in advance but couldn't recall any preparations made by the city.
"I can't remember anything, any dire warning, saying to stay inside," Robinson said. "But, like I said, the city itself was not prepared, especially with its elderly residents or its poor residents."
City officials did not release a heat emergency warning until July 15 -- the last day of the heat wave.
According to the disaster survey from the National Weather Service (NWS), the heat wave had been so unusual that it was not immediately recognized as a public health emergency.
"Unfortunately, a heat wave connotes discomfort, not violence. Inconvenience, not alarm," Sullivan said.
The refrigerated semi-trucks, originally purposed as food distribution trucks, that came to hold the number of bodies the morgue didn't have the space to hold reframed the heat wave for many Chicagoans. The heat wave of 1988 was still fresh in the minds of many, including Robinson, but there had been one weather factor that made the 1995 heat wave deadlier than the last.
Cook County morgue technicians work between a row of refrigerated trucks outside the morgue on Tuesday, July 18, 1995, as the city of Chicago continues to deal with the rising death count from the recent heat wave to hit the area. At least 199 lives have been claimed by the hot humid temperatures. (AP Photo/Mike Fisher)
The dew points in the heat wave were in the upper 70s to lower 80s, according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Nicole LoBiondo. The NWS defines a dew point temperature as the temperature to which the air would need to be cooled at a constant air pressure to create a relative humidity of 100%. After that point, the air would not be able to hold any more moisture as a gas, so either precipitation or fog would occur beyond that point.
The NWS states that dew point temperatures values at or above 65 degrees become "oppressive." AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Joe Lundberg added that dew points in the upper 70s to lower 80s were rare in the U.S., particularly that far north from the Gulf of Mexico.
"In addition, a general lack of wind added to the overall withering effect of the record heat and the very high humidity levels, elevating temperatures to what today would contribute to AccuWeather RealFeel® Temperatures in excess of 120 degrees," Lundberg said.
And it wasn't just extreme heat during the daytime. No relief was felt during the night due to a localized weather phenomenon.
"These dew points made it oppressively humid during the day outside, and temperatures were exacerbated at night due to the 'urban heat island' effect in the city," LoBiondo said.
The "urban heat island" concept refers to the factoring in of a high concentration of buildings, parking lots and roads in cities that tend to absorb the heat during the day then radiate it at night. Temperatures during the nights of the heat wave lingered in the upper 70s to lower 80s, providing little relief when the sun had sank below the horizon.
The fatality numbers caught officials off guard, overwhelming the system. Ambulances became unavailable, hospitals filled to the breaking point and funeral homes even had trouble picking up the bodies. Later on, finding an organist for a funeral was a task in itself, according to then-Chief Medical Examiner Edmund Donoghue. The city had to call in refrigerated food trucks to store some of the bodies.
"It was certainly epidemic levels," Donoghue told WGB News.
Chicago's summer of 2020 is on track to be hotter than the summer of 1995, which the NWS considers the second-warmest summer on record. Chicago's average temperature from June 20 to July 13, 2020, has been 78.8 degrees, which is 5.9 degrees above average. In comparison, Chicago's meteorological summer of 1995 averaged 75.2 degrees, which is 2.2 degrees above average.
"As bad as the 1995 heat wave was, this disaster is worse," Donoghue told WGN News, referring to the current health crisis and reasoning that people can't escape the virus the way survivors escaped the heat and the health care workers involved can also be endangered.
A grim lesson from the 1995 heat wave prompted Cook County to take over a refrigerated warehouse to hold up to 2,000 bodies 25 years later in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic during the summer of 2020.
Like the heat wave of 1995, systemic health and social inequalities have put some racial and ethnic minority groups at an increased risk of getting COVID-19, the CDC statists reported in June. The CDC found that both Black and Native American or Alaska Native people are five times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people. Latinx people are four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people.
The city has reacted to change how the local government responds to heat waves. Since the heat wave of 1995, Robinson said, there has been a change from the city, including cooling centers opening in extreme heat and warming centers during the wintertime. Still, it had been a heavy lesson to learn.
Robinson was at the front of the morgue for news coverage for as long as 12 hours in a day that July. He and the crew would report on the death toll from the heat wave for about three weeks as families came to identify loved ones.
"I just remember seeing bodybag after body bag after body bag," Robinson said.
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