![]() As with the emergency room visits calculation, they used a complicated model that estimated individual exposure over time to specific temperatures common in certain environments, whether indoors, outdoors or in a vehicle, for different people based on where they live and typical daily movement patterns. The scientists also calculated likely mortality rates in each of these cities during a five-day heat wave without power. "And if we don’t account for these, we’re in trouble.” Phoenix's unhoused population at risk during potential heat wave ![]() “Low likelihood events, even if some mathematician rounds them off to zero, still happen and have happened in reality," Georgescu said. It's important to predict the impact of such events so that cities can better prepare. But it's happened before, for example in the northeast U.S. Matei Georgescu, a professor at Arizona State University and the paper's senior author, said the odds of a five-day heat wave occurring during a major power outage are small. Energy Information Administration started reporting monthly on blackouts, the number of such events affecting more than 50,000 people and lasting longer than one hour has doubled, from around 45 in 2015 to 90 in 2021. The frequency of both heat waves and major electrical grid failures has increased dramatically in recent years. More: Exertional heat stroke is on the rise for athletes. While scientists defined a heat wave in Detroit, where only 60% of residents have air conditioning, as a five-day period when temperatures range between 72 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, a heat wave in Phoenix is defined as a five-day period with temperatures that stay between 90 and 113 degrees. cities and because 90% of Phoenix residents rely on air conditioning units that would not function during a blackout. That's because extreme temperatures in Phoenix are more extreme than in most other U.S. But the toll in Phoenix dwarfs that in both of those cities. The study, published Tuesday in the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology, also evaluated the potential human health impact of a blackout during a five-day heat wave in Atlanta and Detroit. That's a big problem for America's hottest big city, which currently has fewer than 3,000 emergency department beds. If a five-day heat wave and a blackout power outage hit Phoenix at the same time, nearly 817,000 people - more than 50% of the city's current population of 1.4 million - could end up in the emergency room, a new study has calculated.īy the year 2055, under projected warming scenarios due to climate change, that number would rise to nearly 877,000 people requiring a visit to the ER and to nearly 989,000 by 2085, not accounting for population growth. View Gallery: Phoenix weather photos: Heat wave hits Valley
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