Broadcast Journalist & Data Storyteller
CRUEL SUMMER
How the City of Phoenix protects it's vulnerable communities from heat related illness due to the increasingly hot summer temperatures.
Photo via Pexels
Waking up to an extreme heat warning and temperatures over 100ºF is just your average day during the scorching months of Phoenix summers.
As these summer months start to approach, the city of Phoenix gets hot, and because of climate change and the heat island effect that plagues the city, it’s only getting hotter.
Phoenix is at the center of an urban heat island, according to the director of the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation for the City of Phoenix, Dr. David Hondula.
According to Hondula, this effect causes a retention of heat within the city leading to temperatures in the early morning as much as 13ºF hotter than areas just 35 minutes outside of the city.
In July of 2022 there were 20 days where the temperature in Phoenix rose above 110ºF according to the National Weather Service.
Hot days like these can equally affect vulnerable communities, especially when it comes to those who suffer from heat related illness.
To figure out why this is, Hondula looks to the beginnings of the city.
According to Hondula, environmental injustices in Phoenix were created
by urban development & racism, including practices such as redlining and housing discrimination, which created designated areas of the city for people of color. Setting them up for economic failure, this practice has caused a systematic inequality for minorities or people of color living in Phoenix.
“Neighborhoods where people have lower incomes tend to be hotter and tend to have higher rates of heat related illness. Heat is very clearly an equity issue,” Hondula said.
Anticipating another hot summer like the last, the City of Phoenix is gearing up to help its residents brave this intense heat, and mitigate heat related illness.
A program that attempts to tackle the rising number of heat illness is the Heat Relief Network.
Cleo Warner is a Human Services Planner for the Maricopa Association of Governments who works closely with the network.
The Heat Relief Network is an organization of volunteers who provide hydration stations, cooling centers, and water donation sites throughout the Phoenix Area, Warner said.
The Maricopa County Association of Governments in partnership with the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation for the City of Phoenix work together to connect volunteer locations and provide maps and information to the community about the various volunteer locations of the Heat Relief Network, according to Warner.
“It’s totally volunteer work that keeps the community running,” Warner said
Volunteer work for the Heat Relief Network takes on a few different challenges. One opportunity is to open a cooling center. This involves a cooled indoor location that provides refuge from the heat during the day to visitors who might need it. Cooling centers also offer bottled water or drinking fountains inside, according to the Heat Relief Network website.
The Heat Relief Network website also details hydration stations, which serve as another volunteer opportunity, where individuals can go to receive bottled water and other collected donated items.
Warner also detailed the Heat Relief Network’s strategies to target areas made up of vulnerable communities, making sure they have access to the Network’s resources.
“We’ve been working on coordinated media strategies with various partners in the network, and we’ve also been working with Valley Metro to get information about the network out through public transit. We know how huge of a role public transit is for keeping people cool and transporting people who don’t have access to other means of travel,” Warner said.
While the organization continues to progress and grow, they are also figuring out how to work around roadblocks they come across along the way.
As a new program within the city there are a lot of questions that still surround the best ways to reach the communities that need the most help. One way the network achieves this is by working with mapping systems to see where any gaps in their resources may lie according to Warner.
“Better targeting volunteer locations to reach people of vulnerable communities is definitely a work in progress. It takes a lot of data and work to figure out where specifically a service is needed and what service is needed,” Warner said.
The inequity of greenery in low income areas worsens the extreme hot temperatures of Phoenix summers.
Greenery, foliage, and trees are able to respirate heat from the atmosphere, reducing the temperature of the area that surrounds them.
But plants can be difficult to take care of, and for many people in a desert environment like Phoenix, extremely costly.
Tending to plants everyday will often run up a large water bill, an expense that people in low income communities may not be able to spare.
The space where one would expect to find grass, flowers or bushes in higher income areas is often replaced by gravel or cement in areas where residents cannot afford to care for greenery.
The lack of greenery in low income areas leads to deadly temperatures under the Phoenix summer sun.
Growing Up In Phoenix
Interview with Shiara Bradley
Growing plants that are native to Arizona are a great way to reduce water usage while increasing the amount of greenery.
The shade provided by trees and other green plants can greatly reduce the amount of electricity that Phoenix households use to power air conditioners.
The City of Phoenix has a plant a tree program which makes it possible to donate money to plant trees in designated neighborhoods.
WHY SO HOT?
While we all know Phoenix is a hot city, what makes it especially hot? This video goes into the basics of the Heat Island Theory, and describes why cities are often much hotter than the areas around them.
Grace Lutheran Church
While the Maricopa Association of Governments is the agency that puts together the Heat Relief network, the many volunteer organizations that come together as members of the network are who truly make the difference.
These volunteers include public libraries, Salvation Army locations and churches, all of which are compiled into a map created by the Maricopa Association of Governments employees in charge of overseeing the network.
One of the organizations that brings a large number of volunteers to work with the Heat Relief Network, Warner said, is the Arizona Faith Network. The Faith Network connects churches that are able to open their doors as a cooling center or hydration station to members of the community.
One such church is Grace Lutheran Church located at 1124 N 3rd St. in Phoenix.
Abigail Martinez is a volunteer who helped support the church as a cooling center during the summer of 2022.
While the church is open to members of their congregation year round, the leadership team is planning to open their doors again for the 2023 Heat Relief Network season as a cooling center, Martinez said.
From 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. Monday through Friday the church provides water, snacks and lunch inside their air conditioned building to those who may not have another way of escaping the heat, Martinez said. In the past, the church has also had Chaplins visit their Fellowship Hall, where the cooling center is offered, to host bible study and more importantly be someone to talk to.
“It takes a village,” Martinez said when describing how members of the church and surrounding churches come together to prepare food such as sandwiches, or supply pallets of water as donations.
Martinez included that the work she does would not be possible without the organizing efforts from both the Arizona Faith Network and the Heat Relief Network.
Martinez shared that she has seen people from all walks of life visit the church’s cooling center. “I avoid being pushy about religion, instead I really try to let my kindness and my empathy show,” Martinez said.
While on the surface the Heat Relief Network might seem like distributing water and resources, for many it carries a much deeper significance.
When a visitor came to the cooling center, Martinez was there to listen as he shared some of the dark moments of his life. Through his anger, she was able to sit and have a conversation with him.
“His emotions were just flowing,” Martinez said. “He said he was so thankful because there aren’t a lot of people who are willing to just sit and listen.”
“The empathy I’m able to show people through opportunities like these goes a long way,” Martinez said.