It was only after a shift change that employees found her lying on the ground.Įxtreme heat is one of the deadliest consequences of global warming. But on that 117-degree day, she was outside for hours, according to a coroner’s report, and last seen by staff while walking around the facility’s courtyard. When a second heat wave bore down roughly two weeks later, Anne Gacambi Methu’s family hoped she would be safe inside her assisted living facility in Riverside. The paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. His nephew found him that evening, lying still in the dirt driveway where he had gone into cardiac arrest. After several hours, he began to feel ill and returned home to a trailer that lacked air conditioning.
20 digging cable trenches at a mobile home park outside Desert Hot Springs in Riverside County. Seventy-three-year-old Jorge Valerio-Santiago went to work on Aug. On maps of the record heat, Southern California glowed like an ember, its normally temperate coast shaded orange, its inland cities and desert towns a deep, smoldering purple. The days brought suffering and the nights offered little relief.
It was the hottest August on record in California.įor more than three weeks in 2020, back-to-back heat waves settled over the Southwest, claiming dozens of lives and leaving tens of millions of people sweltering in triple-digit temperatures. Phillips, Tony Barboza, Ruben Vives and Sean Greene