Q for Chicago area DU'ers about the heatwave & the death count

[Maine Mary]

While in the car yesterday, I was listening to conservative talk station. (In case you're wondering why, I have no choice, it's the only talk station I pick up here)

Anyway, Howie Carr was carrying on about how Clinton was never blamed for the deaths resulting from a heatwave in Chicago. He claimed that 940-some people died. Howie didn't say what year it was, but I do seem to remember something about it.

Given the propensity of many of these conservative talking heads to embellish the truth OR (whoops) :eyes: make some "mistakes" with the facts, I'd like to know...

1) What year was that heatwave?
&
2) What was the death count?

[madrchsod]

1. 1995

and the amount of deaths is about right, google chicago heat wave for more facts..it was a nasty ass summer in northern il

[evlbstrd]

2. Ooooh, '95.

The middle 80's summers were no picnic, either.

[Skittles]

20. I'll never forget that Yahoo pic of a rookie Chicago cop

breaking down after helping carry dozens of bodies out - his older partner had an arm around him

Truly an awful summer that was

[stevebreeze]

3. there was a book that just came out this year on the '95 heat wave

Here isa na excerpt and a link for the book. By the way a national disaster was not declared, so Clinton had no authority to do anything even if he had wanted, not that there was much he could have done.




Dying Alone

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/443213in.html


Klinenberg: In 1995 there were no uniform standards for determining a "heat related death," so officials had to develop them. Edmund Donoghue, Cook County's chief medical examiner, used state-of-the-art criteria to report 465 heat-related deaths for the heat wave week and 521 heat deaths for the month of July. But Mayor Richard M. Daley challenged these findings. "It's hot," the mayor told the media. "But let's not blow it out of proportion. . . . Every day people die of natural causes. You cannot claim that everybody who has died in the last eight or nine days dies of heat. Then everybody in the summer that dies will die of heat." Many local journalists shared Daley's skepticism, and before long the city was mired in a callous debate over whether the so-called heat deaths were—to use the term that recurred at the time—"really real."

Medical examiners around the country confirmed that Donoghue's heat-related death criteria were scientifically sound and endorsed his findings. But perhaps the best measure of heat deaths comes from another figure—the "excess death" rate—which counts the difference between the reported deaths and the typical deaths for a given time period. According to this measure, 739 Chicagoans above the norm died during the week of 14 to 20 July—which means that Donoghue had been conservative in his accounts.

[Maine Mary]

5. I knew it had to be something like that

By the way a national disaster was not declared, so Clinton had no authority to do anything even if he had wanted

I knew there had to be some explaination.

Thanks for the other info as well. Did Daley suffer politically for his apparent indifference? He's one of those DLC Dems, right?

[flannelmouth]

6. Clinton should have declared a national disaster

He was the only one who could. Can we please stop hitching our horse to this guy's wagon. He killed Gore, He will Drag down Hill. This party needs to MOVEON and find some new leaders.

[Maine Mary]

7. The State first has to request the declaration

Clinton couldn't have done anything until the request was made.

[Skittles]

21. he did not kill Gore, the f***ing corporate whore media did

I do agree we could use some new leaders though

[stevebreeze]

8. Yes Daley is not a lib by many measures

surprisingly he suffered no political fallout from all the deaths. He is currently in trouble from political cronies dipping their hand in the public till.

[Lisa]

4. more info -- here is an interesting study of the heat wave

Actually, it was an ominous preview of the New Orleans situation, since again it was the poor/elderly/minority neighborhoods that got hit hardest.

I haven't read the book yet, but the epidemiology guy down the hall from me says it's really good. (He's also highly critical of Bush, by the way.)

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/443213in.html

The thing is, Chicago and other cities learned from this disaster. Toronto, for example, implemented a heatwave emergency plan a couple of years ago which had some people scoffing about "overreacting" (they changed their tune this year, when it undoubtedly saved lives). And I can't help noticing that the changes in Chicago coincided with the reforms carried out in FEMA during the Clinton era. Is it possible that the extra attention, support, and funding during that time made a difference?


p.s. I see that the previous respondent and I had the same book in mind, and posted at the same time!

[stevebreeze]

9. na na I beat you....

[iconoclastic cat]

10. Stupid argument. There was no DHS in 1995. Besides, it was a heat wave.

It happened quite suddenly, and the reason so many people died was that the power went out. ComEd couldn't keep up with the energy demand.

[Dastard Stepchild]

11. This is true...

But, there were also other issues, such as EMTs being turned away from hospitals, and administrators for the city refusing to call on, or accept, offers of emergency help from surrounding areas until it was to late.

I'm not jumping on your comment... merely pointing out that there were many factors that came together to increase the death count, including ComEd's response to the situation. :)

If you do get the chance, the book Heat Wave is illuminating. It was mentioned in this thread a few times. One of the interesting points made by Klinenberg was that, while it is true that one can never prepare for the exact moment the heat wave will hit, the social and political context of a city can come together in such a way as to compromise the health outcomes of certain populations (in this case, typically the older, impoverished African-American males disconnected from formal and informal social services and social support).

I really loved the book, so I tend to recommend it any chance that I can. :)

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

12. The heat wave in July 1995 didn't happen that suddenly. It had been

forecasted for at least a week.

As for ComEd, granted the energy demand was high, but they cut power in neighborhoods all over the city and suburbs.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't parts of the West Side go without power for about 5 days?

[KharmaTrain]

16. Two Days, But That Was Bad Enough

I remember one afternoon when the temperature hit 106...power had oversurged and lights were out all over the north side of the city. I remember seeing a tree actually explode from the heat.

That disaster was a silent killer as many of those who died were elderly and it took days for all the bodies to start turning up. Like NOLA, the worst hit were the elderly and poor, but the city's response...after an initial overload...was quick and a whole slew of laws, including ones forcing Commonwealthy Edison to keep power on, was approved.

Yep, the West Side had the longest outages, but I was working on the Northwest side and remember long stretches of brown-outs that made running the AC all but useless...and I think that's what cause a lot of the problems.

The wingnuts are grasping for straws to try to equate what happened in Chicago with NOLA. There was never a national emergency where hundreds of thousands were imperilled. No one ever was forced to walk the streets for days without food and water. Also Richie Daley knew he had a President and Federal Government ready to step in. I'm sure he doesn't feel that way now.

Cheers...

[iconoclastic cat]

18. We spent those days on the roof.

I lived in Humboldt Park at the time, right off Division. We made a party of it. It was too horrible, all the death. We tried to drink it out of our consciousness. Our strategy might have worked: nobody died in our building, and it seems like a distant dream now.

[KharmaTrain]

19. I Was At Belmont & Cicero

I remember driving Cicero up to Skokie...not a single traffic light working. I can never remember the power being out over such a big area. We later found out that Commonwealthy Edison had let their infrastructure deteriorate that was the root cause for most of the blackouts.

Those days were real tricky cause I was working at a radio station and it would be tossed off the air as the power was coming and going...and no back-up generator.

I can only fathom spending days without electricty, water and forced into the roofs and attics. How can one think the world hasn't gone crazy?

Cheers from the NW burbs...

[RandomKoolzip]

25. A tree exploded from the heat?!

How the hell does THAT happen?!

[KharmaTrain]

27. Spontaneous Combustion...

It took me several years to get a scientific explanation on what I saw.

It happened as I was stuck in traffic on the expressway...next to the road, I saw a tree suddenly go up in flames.

It was explained that the heat from the sun, the air and the nearby asphalt had evaporated whatever water was in the tree and the imbalance created heat which in turn created the spark that led to the tree exploding. A similar thing happens in forrest fires where the fire will "leap" across a barrier on the warmth of the air and the rapid evaporation that occurs.

Maybe someone with a forrestry background can explain this further.

[prolesunited]

13. Is there any precedent for calling a heat wave

and national emergency/disaster area? I don't recall that ever happening before.

It was awful, but the city did learn from it. This past summer, we've had record-level heat and drought, but there was no repeat of '95 with the new strategies in place.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

14. 739 deaths

Read the Amazon editorial review of Klinenberg's book for an interesting rebuttal to some of his claims from an MD who was there on the scene.

Think about switching your radio to a music station.

[Lisa]

26. it looks like Dr. Wilhelm (deputy commissioner of the Health Dept.) ....

agrees with a lot of Klinenberg's points. He takes issue with Klinenberg's criticism of Mayor Daley (and the short and long-term responses). And he seems to suggest that Klinenberg needs more backup for his assertion that racial disparities were a risk factor.

He does note that Klinenberg's area of specialty is racial issues, adding that "focus on race is therefore understandable", but he doesn't come right out and say that this is entirely wrong. In fact, he ends up by saying, "Its flaws aside, Heat Wave is a thought-provoking examination that challenges everyone in medicine and public health to look beyond our training to consider sociological conditions as risk factors." On the strength of that statement alone, I now want to read this book (not just for my own research into the psychological impacts of environmental disasters, but because it sounds rather interesting).

[radwriter0555]

15. Clinton caused a heat wave? Dang.. he's a powerful fella....

amazing.

[dsc]

17. Several things

First, Chicago is a city of a couple of million so a thousand deaths is only a small portion of the city. The rest of Chicago and for that matter Illinois should have been able to handle this themselves.

Second, just what would Clinton have done here? The only real solutions I could see would have been air conditioned shelters for the poor and elderly or air conditioners for them (though the ConEd outages would have rendered them useless). I think Illinois was at least as well situated to handle that as the feds would have been. It isn't like NO where nearly a fifth of LA's population was underwater.

[Lisa]

24. the designated neighborhood shelter idea worked well in Toronto ...

... during our heatwave recently. I believe that they got the idea from studying recommendations made after Chicago. I think the municipal government and the Red Cross were in charge of this (admittedly the level of destruction isn't anywhere near that of a major hurricane).

http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=000721&tid=001
http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/health/heat_notification.htm

[ET Awful]

22. First, Clinton didn't cut 80% of the funding for Chicago's air conditioner

budget for several years leading up to the heatwave.

Second, the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois did not request federal assistance . . . (odd, isn't that what the right wingers mistakenly try to point out in NOLA?).

Third, what could Clinton have done? Send in 10's of thousands of National Guard troops with portable air conditioners (and perhaps the Army Corp of Engineers to build a heat-insulated dome over the city).

In Chicago, there was one problem . . . HEAT. It was exacerbated by energy companies shutting down power where it was most needed. This is what caused the deaths.

In New Orleans, there was a period of 5 years where the steps that could have prevented the disaster were not taken due to Bush and his rubber stamp congress decreasing the budget for levee reinforcement by 80%. The state and local governments requested aid and were basically put on hold for several days. The resultant flooding overwhelmed sewage treatment facilities, oil facilities, chemical facilities, power stations, etc. resulting in not only a complete loss of electricity during a very hot time of year, but also creating a toxic sludge throughout the city. Water in some areas was 20 feet high. There was no food, no water, and no aid for days.

Sorry, it's a complete bullshit comparison.

[Lisa]

23. and another thing -- heatwaves weren't on a "Big 3" list issued by FEMA

... some time before the event happened. (Remember, they'd already identified New Orleans, along with San Francisco and New York, as being vulnerable to particular kinds of events -- earthquake and terrorist attack, in the 2 latter cases.)

So there was already plenty of precedent for being concerned about the ability of those levees to withstand a hurricane.

As for the heatwave -- as other posters have noted, that kind of disaster isn't as obvious to onlookers as a huge amount of water pouring into the city. Particularly when the most susceptible people are elderly or infirm, living in a poor neighborhood, their deaths may not be noticed. (This is not a justification ... in fact, it indicates a serious problem in a community -- but it's a different matter from not heeding a danger which has already been pointed out repeatedly.)

I was doing research on climate change and natural hazards during the late 1980s and 1990s, and from my recollection, there were not many people looking at the impacts of heat emergencies on public health prior to the mid-1990s. Higher sea levels were identified pretty early on as a cause for concern (particularly how they might affect coastal communities -- one of the earliest cc impact studies done in Canada was looking at the potential for storm surges and flooding). But even though extreme temperatures were a "first order" variable (as opposed to second or third-order, more indirect stuff like "how crop pathogens and disease vectors could be affected"), there just wasn't as much discussion about heatwaves. That changed after Chicago.

The other thing is, a lot of people (even in warmer regions) still don't see higher temperatures as a big problem. George W. Bush prides himself on jogging/biking during the hottest time of the day, even giving out "100 degree club" T-shirts to those he feels are "tough enough". Even during the European heatwave fairly recently, Bush's base was sitting inside with the air conditioning turned up full blast, blaming France for being disorganized and not resilient (that macho thing again).

If Clinton HAD declared a state of emergency, even with hundreds of deaths, my suspicion is that his political rivals would have mocked and derided him, for being alarmist, and trying to stampede people into supporting his "global warming agenda". (Up here in Canada, the mayor of Toronto called in the military for help during a snowstorm, and that helped torpedo his political career ... it was widely perceived as an overreaction.)