City to get heat wave warnings

Three months after what some City officials are calling the deadliest heat wave since 1952, the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) announced plans to look into employing a coastal storm tracker to predict coming heat waves to warn elderly and disabled residents. The program, Advanced Warning System (AWS), will setup a list of contacts to be told of a predicted heat wave 24 to 28 hours in advance. The AWS will be tested during the summer of 2007.
&#8220Information is a powerful tool, and ensuring that our most vulnerable communities have the most advanced warning of an impending heat emergency is critical,” said OEM Commissioner Joseph Bruno, while making the announcement on Wednesday, November 15.
Bruno added that the OEM will get an early start on their annual outreach to City residents, who are elderly and have disabilities, as well as those who have medical conditions making them more susceptible to heat-related illnesses, warning them that they are most at risk to heat-related illness and death.
Bruno's announcement came in conjunction with the release of a report by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), with findings that about 140 people in the City had perished from the heat between Thursday, July 27 and Saturday, August 5.
City officials attributed 40 of the deaths directly to heat stroke - which occurs when a person's body temperature rises to about 105 degrees soon before death. Only two of the 40 people who died of heat stroke were found to have working air conditioners, and 80 percent of the heat stroke deaths were in people over the age of 50, the DOHMH's report states.
&#8220Because heat waves can be forecasted and the risk factors for heat-related death have been consistently shown in this and other studies, heat-related deaths are potentially preventable,” the report states. &#8220Findings from this investigation suggest that encouraging friends and family members to help relocate those at highest risk for heat stroke to air-conditioned environments might save lives in future heat waves.”
Between 2000 and 2006, city officials counted 21 heat waves, only six of which lasted five days or longer. The second heat wave of 2006 - from July 27 to August 5 - was the longest, lasting 10 days, and the most severe, with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit for three days.
In addition, 100 deaths were tallied as &#8220excess deaths,” by subtracting the average number of deaths from the 10-day period from the tally in 2006. During the heat wave last summer, the death rate rose by 8 percent - 100 deaths - from the average, and the DOHMH called this increase similar to the spike of longer heat waves in the City in the past.
Some of those classified as &#8220excess deaths,” had existing medical conditions - heart and lung disease, for example - and heat was ruled as a contributing factor.
This calculation was the first time that the City's DOHMH used the &#8220excess death” method of calculation to calculate heat-related deaths, though cities nationwide have used the method since the 1990s.