Heat is the deadliest weather New York City gets, not blizzards, not hurricanes. The Health Department says roughly 500 New Yorkers die from heat-related causes every year, and its new report finds most of those deaths happen on ordinary hot days, not during heat waves, just as the federal program that helps low-income New Yorkers get an air conditioner has closed for the season.
About 80 percent of heat-related deaths happen on days that are merely hot, between 82 and 94 degrees, the report found. Those are the days people skip the AC to save a few bucks on the electric bill. Most people who died of heat stress, the city says, were in homes without air conditioning. The risk isn’t the once-a-summer scorcher. It’s the ordinary July afternoon in an apartment that never cools down.
The deaths do not fall evenly. The Health Department says heat deaths fall disproportionately on Black New Yorkers, the result of long-running inequities in housing quality and access to cooling. A severe heat wave last June killed 19 people from heat stress, the report notes, hitting Black and Latino New Yorkers hardest. “Hot weather is a silent but deadly killer,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Alister F. Martin.
The timing is bad. That benefit, the federally funded Cooling Assistance program, closed for the year on June 5, earlier than it ever has before. The help for the people most likely to die in a hot apartment shut down just as the dangerous season was starting.
The city did add cooling centers, including three new ones at its Neighborhood Health Action Centers, one of them in Brownsville at 259 Bristol Street. Cooling centers are free, air-conditioned public spaces, and they open during extreme heat, defined as a heat index of 100 degrees for a day or 95 degrees for two days in a row. But the centers open on the extreme days, and 80 percent of the deaths happen on the ordinary hot ones.
Sign up for Notify NYC for heat alerts, and use the city’s Cool Options Finder to locate the nearest cooling center before you need it. If you have AC, use it on the 80-degree days too, not just the 100-degree ones. And check on elderly, sick, and isolated neighbors who do not have air conditioning. The people who die in these apartments usually die alone.
Featured image: Courtesy a816-dohbesp.nyc.gov
