By the end of the week, temperatures in Phoenix are projected to top 110 degrees for the first time this year. In response, the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for central Arizona from 10 a.m. Wednesday to 8 p.m. Friday. Last year, an excessive heat warning for Phoenix was not issued until June 30.
Even before it was deemed excessive, the heat already had been deadly. Across Maricopa County, four people have died from heat-related conditions so far this year, according to data from the county released Tuesday. It’s not clear how quickly the county reached four heat-related deaths in 2023, but it took until June 21 to reach five.
Maricopa County could reach five long before that. The county medical examiner also is investigating 48 additional 2024 deaths that the office suspects are heat-related.
Those numbers come from the county’s new heat illness and death dashboard, a tool launched May 30 to provide up-to-date data. The online tracker will be updated weekly on Tuesdays, according to the county, providing a rolling picture throughout the summer of what could potentially be another deadly few months.
“This is a significant new step in tracking the effects of heat on people who live in or visit Maricopa County, which we have been doing since 2006,” Dr. Rebecca Sunenshine, medical director for the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, said in a press release.
The arrival of Phoenix’s potentially scorching season comes on the heels of its deadliest summer in memory. The county health department counted at least 645 people who died from heat-related complications in 2023, enough to make heat the 10th most common cause of death in Arizona. Last year’s heat death total was an increase of more than 50% from 2022.
It also was not an outlier. Heat deaths have risen unfathomably during the past decade. Heat deaths numbered in the single digits as recently as 10 years ago — from 2013 to 2015, the highest total heat deaths in a year was 84.
Keeping cool
While the brutal, record-setting summer heat is directly to blame for last year’s staggering death total, several other factors played contributing roles. Those include a housing market that quickly became difficult for many to afford, an increase in evictions and a booming population of unhoused people.Many of those factors persist, which makes the early arrival of extreme heat grim news.
“Quite honestly, the root cause is we have not been dealing with affordable housing and homelessness,” Will Humble, executive director of the nonprofit Arizona Public Health Association, told Phoenix New Times last month. “That’s where the bodies came from.”
People experiencing homelessness accounted for 45% of the county’s heat-related deaths in 2023, according to the county public health department’s report. In conjunction with city governments, the county has implemented some new measures it hopes will limit the fallout it saw last year.
On May 1, Maricopa County and various cities launched a combined effort to provide more relief through cooling centers — keeping them open longer and on weekends after many closed at the hottest time of the day last year. The Maricopa Association of Governments also refreshed its annual online map network that people can use to find cooling, respite and hydration stations across the Valley.
The cooling centers are highly concentrated in Phoenix, which has dozens. This summer, five of them will operate later into the night with expanded hours. At Cholla, Harmon and Yucca libraries, the facilities will be open Mondays through Saturdays until 10 p.m. The Senior Opportunities West Senior Center will operate as an overnight cooling center from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. Phoenix also has opened a new 24/7 cooling center at Burton Barr Central Library.
Each has a limited capacity. According to city of Phoenix public information officer Keyera Williams, cooling centers at the three libraries have a capacity of 20, while the overnight centers serve a maximum of 50.
With roughly 7,000 unhoused people living in Phoenix, according to a January count by the Maricopa Association of Governments, the cooling centers are far from a solution to the larger problem. Whether they make a difference in the county’s heat response in 2024 remains to be seen.
But with 110-degree days already on the horizon, it won’t take long to find out.
