Over a sweltering span of five days in July 1995, Chicago — a city that once burned to ground — had never felt hotter.
The heat ebbed by July 17, but it would take months to get a clearer picture of its toll. When data emerged, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said the heat wave had contributed to 465 deaths between July 14 and July 20. According to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, “the heat wave appears to have contributed to 254 more deaths than were attributed by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.”
Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist who also says the official number was an undercount, called the heat “oppressive.”
“People felt trapped. It’s a feeling I think a lot of people can relate to now that climate change has become so salient,” said Klinenberg, whose 2002 book “Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago” examined how systemic failures led to the highest weather-related death toll in city history. Some of the failures, including the social infrastructure Klinenberg assesses, are in worse shape than ever. And while attempts at decarbonization haven’t been nearly strong enough, Klinenberg said, one key difference 27 years after Chicago’s deadliest heat wave is that the effects of climate change are all but impossible to ignore.
Scientists said the past week has featured some of the hottest days on Earth in at least 125,000 years. Climate change has increased the frequency of intense heat domes, researchers say, boosting the odds of longer and more frequent heat waves. Several intense heat domes have contributed to heat records this summer in Texas, Mexico, India and China; another is developing in the southwestern United States this week. Phoenix is expected to see temperatures as high as 117 degrees this week, according to the National Weather Service, while it could get as hot as 110 degrees in parts of California’s central valley.
Those conditions were similar to the ones that roasted the Windy City in 1995.
