When I was homeless in LA, the heat was unbearable, and there was precious little shade anywhere. My only respite was public libraries, which are free, air conditioned, quiet, have restrooms, water fountains, and loaded with free entertainment and education. I spent nearly every day there.
IMO, Texas Tribune is about as good as it gets for news in TX. I tend to trust their reporting. I do make a small monthly donation, as they’re non-profit.
TT is decent but doesn't have the staff of a huge NYC megapaper or ProPublica. (ProPublica is basically old school journalism with some influence of WSJ pre-Murdoch.)
TT does original reporting that's quoted in other papers.
PS: TT is ~9 blocks due west of where I hang my hat. :)
Greg Casar, our rep for TX-35, is on Democracy Now! every few months because he's sane, sensible, courageous, and on the side of decency such as ensuring federal standards for health and safety when the state decides to preempt local regulations.
i quite contributing when the format changed from simple list of articles to current "responsive" format. takes way to long to scan articles, which i once did daily.
Another fallback I have used in the past was to hang a hose into the shower and attach a mister head to it. I also had a mister for the porch. Some people install a mister rail [1] along their patio that has a dozen misters on them. They work great. Uses some water but better than heat stroke. This may be useful for people that can't leave their house and can't afford to install or operate HVAC.
Another method I've used was to point a carpet dryer which is just a big portable blower to a window to blow all the heat out of the house and pull in cooler air from the other windows in the evening so I could sleep. I never bothered to install HVAC. I've since moved to a much cooler place and have an earth bermed home.
Or go underground like some in Australia do (homes built in old opal mines or the like).
Earlier this year, I moved to a boat. No A/C, but deck is painted white (as with most boats, for good reason) & if temps get too uncomfortable, water for cooling / swimming is always nearby. :-)
I suspect significant % of world population might be forced to seek creative solutions like this in years ahead...
Passive cooling technology at scale was recently funded and developed through ARPA-E.
It’s amazing to see a sun rejection film in person that is so effective it is cold to touch on a blazing hot day. Installing this stuff city wide would be awesome.
Cities with a tree canopy above the street are very nice. Chlorophyll in plants reflects infrared. Trees are de facto self-replicating self-assembling solar powered nanomachinery that don’t generate any toxic manufacturing waste.
The tops of buildings can use titanium dioxide white paint.
Reflection is half the story, these films are also designed to emit their heat energy through the atmospheric window and therefore contribute to active global cooling, not just ‘heating up less fast’.
This kind of thing really bothers me since it's just not that difficult to make extreme heat survivable if you've got access to water, even easier for water and power.
But parking yourself in a trailer is not a good approach. They're so poorly insulated it's basically a solar oven until the sun goes down, like being trapped in a hot car. Even with working AC, that's just going to cost you quite a lot in power since the heat keeps coming in too easily.
If I were stuck living in such a trailer park without funds, I'd likely spend my summers outside in swim trunks, under an umbrella, with a water-mister+fan aimed at me. They even sell such things integrated for the purpose, but you can trivially improvise something.
A Moab bar+cafe I visited in July had an industrial mister+fan the size of a refrigerator that cooled the entire bar despite having one whole wall of roll-top doors open to the >100F outside.
If you've crossed the wet-bulb temperature due to extreme humidity though, that's a different ball game. TFA didn't mention if that was a factor here, I don't think Texas had it that bad humidity-wise in the recent heat waves, did they?
>I don't think Texas had it that bad humidity-wise in the recent heat waves, did they?
They were in Harris County so that is a coastal county where temperatures during the summer are oppressively hot due to high humidity. Back in June when these people passed, the humidity and unseasonably high heat combined to make it very dangerous for people with health problems to be outside during the daytime. Even healthy people were urged to stay indoors due to the high heat index. It gets nasty on the Gulf Coast and Baytown, where they lived, is a refinery town so the air quality is bad anyway.
> TFA didn't mention if that was a factor here, I don't think Texas had it that bad humidity-wise in the recent heat waves, did they?
It’s pretty bad. Harris county is humid. If you’ve ever been in Houston in spring/summer, you know it’s like living in someone’s armpit. Air conditioners are the only reason it’s even livable at this population level in the south.
I remember just the wind blowing sometimes feeling like the exhaust of car idling. I worked at night and outside for a few years. I got to the point I stopped sweating because my body got used to the heat. After working in an office for a couple of years I lost my ability to stand the heat like I did.
Houston in particular is one of the most humid cities in the country, with 100% humidity a common and inevitable experience for its inhabitants.
The last few months have been even hotter than usual, so combined with even >70% humidity, it's been sufficiently lethal that going without AC for long is a death sentence (especially for the vulnerable like the elderly).
In the context of the story I believe that the mobile home would refer to a manufactured home located within a trailer park community. It's mobile until it is installed in the park and after that it is a stationary home, maybe even on a lot that they rent from the park owner.
Though these people seemed to be retirement age it sounds from the story like they are tied to their home due to mobility issues so that makes it less likely that they were living in an RV or camper van. The costs of replacing an AC for a mobile home in an established park would be high enough that they would probably need to get a loan if they are on a fixed income since the home likely has central heat/AC. If they had been in an RV or camper van the costs of replacing those units is considerably lower.
This is very sad to me. It sounds like their central heat/AC unit failed and they decided to replace it instead of going to their big box store and buying a window mounted AC unit that would function for the summer allowing them an opportunity to set aside some money to pay for repairs or replacement of the main system unit. Poor people in a rich nation. Over a barrel needing repairs or replacement of an expensive item that is critical for survival this time of year.
Without air conditioning, it wouldn't be surprising for the heat and humidity inside the trailer to surpass the human body's capacity to maintain body temperature.
Texas has been seeing unbearably hot weather, even for Texas, the past few months. High humidity is the norm.
The weather is literally lethal and cannot be survived by human bodies without breaks/cooling. Sweat alone isn't enough. Heat strokes are inevitable, especially when you're elderly.
(As an example, if my AC stops working during a Texas summer, the temperature in my relatively nice apartment will climb to the 90s F with high enough humidity that sweating barely keeps me cool.)
31 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 83.6 ms ] threadI already thought about cities needing to organize "cool shelters", but it might become a requirement.
It seems there are no viable statistics for those kinds of death.
I live on the hottest part of France and I already planned to move to a colder cheap city. I'm expecting people to progressively do the same.
279 died last year. I don't know how reliable texas tribune is but they cite their sources. Is that not viable statistics?
TT does original reporting that's quoted in other papers.
PS: TT is ~9 blocks due west of where I hang my hat. :)
Greg Casar, our rep for TX-35, is on Democracy Now! every few months because he's sane, sensible, courageous, and on the side of decency such as ensuring federal standards for health and safety when the state decides to preempt local regulations.
i quite contributing when the format changed from simple list of articles to current "responsive" format. takes way to long to scan articles, which i once did daily.
the pain never ends.
I think it will become a necessity in many places
But,
> her father's mobility issues probably made them cautious about leaving the house even as temperatures rose inside
Another method I've used was to point a carpet dryer which is just a big portable blower to a window to blow all the heat out of the house and pull in cooler air from the other windows in the evening so I could sleep. I never bothered to install HVAC. I've since moved to a much cooler place and have an earth bermed home.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Misters-Outside-Nozzles-Umbrella-Back...
Earlier this year, I moved to a boat. No A/C, but deck is painted white (as with most boats, for good reason) & if temps get too uncomfortable, water for cooling / swimming is always nearby. :-)
I suspect significant % of world population might be forced to seek creative solutions like this in years ahead...
It’s amazing to see a sun rejection film in person that is so effective it is cold to touch on a blazing hot day. Installing this stuff city wide would be awesome.
The tops of buildings can use titanium dioxide white paint.
All the 'little' bits help. If nothing else, to reduce A/C power draw.
both of them got heart failure from temperature gradient
But parking yourself in a trailer is not a good approach. They're so poorly insulated it's basically a solar oven until the sun goes down, like being trapped in a hot car. Even with working AC, that's just going to cost you quite a lot in power since the heat keeps coming in too easily.
If I were stuck living in such a trailer park without funds, I'd likely spend my summers outside in swim trunks, under an umbrella, with a water-mister+fan aimed at me. They even sell such things integrated for the purpose, but you can trivially improvise something.
A Moab bar+cafe I visited in July had an industrial mister+fan the size of a refrigerator that cooled the entire bar despite having one whole wall of roll-top doors open to the >100F outside.
If you've crossed the wet-bulb temperature due to extreme humidity though, that's a different ball game. TFA didn't mention if that was a factor here, I don't think Texas had it that bad humidity-wise in the recent heat waves, did they?
They were in Harris County so that is a coastal county where temperatures during the summer are oppressively hot due to high humidity. Back in June when these people passed, the humidity and unseasonably high heat combined to make it very dangerous for people with health problems to be outside during the daytime. Even healthy people were urged to stay indoors due to the high heat index. It gets nasty on the Gulf Coast and Baytown, where they lived, is a refinery town so the air quality is bad anyway.
It’s pretty bad. Harris county is humid. If you’ve ever been in Houston in spring/summer, you know it’s like living in someone’s armpit. Air conditioners are the only reason it’s even livable at this population level in the south.
The last few months have been even hotter than usual, so combined with even >70% humidity, it's been sufficiently lethal that going without AC for long is a death sentence (especially for the vulnerable like the elderly).
Though these people seemed to be retirement age it sounds from the story like they are tied to their home due to mobility issues so that makes it less likely that they were living in an RV or camper van. The costs of replacing an AC for a mobile home in an established park would be high enough that they would probably need to get a loan if they are on a fixed income since the home likely has central heat/AC. If they had been in an RV or camper van the costs of replacing those units is considerably lower.
This is very sad to me. It sounds like their central heat/AC unit failed and they decided to replace it instead of going to their big box store and buying a window mounted AC unit that would function for the summer allowing them an opportunity to set aside some money to pay for repairs or replacement of the main system unit. Poor people in a rich nation. Over a barrel needing repairs or replacement of an expensive item that is critical for survival this time of year.
Without air conditioning, it wouldn't be surprising for the heat and humidity inside the trailer to surpass the human body's capacity to maintain body temperature.
Texas has been seeing unbearably hot weather, even for Texas, the past few months. High humidity is the norm.
The weather is literally lethal and cannot be survived by human bodies without breaks/cooling. Sweat alone isn't enough. Heat strokes are inevitable, especially when you're elderly.
(As an example, if my AC stops working during a Texas summer, the temperature in my relatively nice apartment will climb to the 90s F with high enough humidity that sweating barely keeps me cool.)