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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Sweltering streets: Hundreds of homeless die in extreme heat |
| 2022-06-21 |
| PHOENIX (AP) — Hundreds of blue, green and grey tents are pitched under the sun’s searing rays in downtown Phoenix, a jumble of flimsy canvas and plastic along dusty sidewalks. Here, in the hottest big city in America, thousands of homeless people swelter as the summer’s triple digit temperatures arrive. The stifling tent city has ballooned amid pandemic-era evictions and surging rents that have dumped hundreds more people onto the sizzling streets that grow eerily quiet when temperatures peak in the midafternoon. A heat wave earlier this month brought temperatures of up to 114 degrees (45.5 Celsius) - and it’s only June. Highs reached 118 degrees (47.7 Celsius) last year. "During the summer, it’s pretty hard to find a place at night that’s cool enough to sleep without the police running you off," said Chris Medlock, a homeless Phoenix man known on the streets as "T-Bone" who carries everything he owns in a small backpack and often beds down in a park or a nearby desert preserve to avoid the crowds. I thought T-Bone was Cory "Spartacus" Booker's imaginary friend in Newark? "If a kind soul could just offer a place on their couch indoors maybe more people would live," Medlock said at a dining room where homeless people can get some shade and a free meal. Excessive heat causes more weather-related deaths in the United States than hurricanes, flooding and tornadoes combined. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #13 Darwin awards in the making. |
| Posted by: KBK 2022-06-21 20:00 |
| #12 Yeah, instead the white settles went into the mountains in the wintertime and you got the Donner Party. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-06-21 13:18 |
| #11 When it got too hot in the summer, the Kumeyaay native Americans east of what is now San Diego would move from the desert up into the mountains where it was cooler. They found acorns in abundance and collected them so they could eat them in the desert in winter when it got too cold in the mountains. Hunter gatherers, they had other food sources both in the desert and the mountains. They had it wired. Of course, all that took some work and thought which is a bit more than we can expect from the homeless or the politicians. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2022-06-21 13:12 |
| #10 I well remember back in the late 50's in Oklahoma temperatures of +100 with once getting to 117. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2022-06-21 12:07 |
| #9 ^admirable evasion of the forbidden words! |
| Posted by: Frank G 2022-06-21 11:30 |
| #8 And, yeah, who'd want to open up a gämbl!ng ¢äsino in such an environment? |
| Posted by: DooDahMan 2022-06-21 10:53 |
| #7 ^ They left when it got too hot. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2022-06-21 10:50 |
| #6 They did, though. See: Casa Grande. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-06-21 10:48 |
| #5 @#2 - Exactly. Any place where gila monsters and scorpions and other critters are indigenous is a "no thanks". |
| Posted by: DooDahMan 2022-06-21 10:47 |
| #4 Might ask yourself why the indigenous people didn't settle here long before Europeans showed up. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2022-06-21 10:45 |
| #3 Pheonix is like any other metroplex in the desert southwest. Both good and bad there, but once you leave the outlying communities, it's a haul to anywhere else you can reasonably expect to find stores, etc. It gets hot in the desert in the summertime. The Bill Nye types have trouble grasping this fact. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-06-21 10:06 |
| #2 And the attraction to Phoenix is......? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2022-06-21 10:02 |
| #1 they could go to LA or SF for cooler nights |
| Posted by: Lord Garth 2022-06-21 09:57 |