As millions of people across the country continue to broil under soaring temperatures, many cities are investing in a practical way to help residents beat the heat: cooling centers.
A smattering of studies indicate that cooling centers can help reduce heat-related health emergencies and fatalities. They are a common-sense remedy for residents dealing with an unrelenting heat wave, but one whose efficacy is hard to measure.
The facilities are not always accessible to those who need them — particularly at night, which can be a problem when the temperatures stay stifling after the sun goes down.
Those who frequent cooling centers tend to be older and have lower incomes than the general population, studies show, and many of them have no shelter at all. That, in turn, has led to a sort of “social stigma,” said Kathryn C. Conlon, an environmental epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of California, Davis, leading people to see cooling centers as a last resort rather than a reprieve.
But with the heat wave that has engulfed much of the Western United States for more than a week lingering on — triple-digit temperatures are expected to stretch into the weekend for millions — the cool, communal spaces have been welcome amenities.
At the Ted C. Wills Community Center in Fresno, California, a handful of people gathered around a jigsaw puzzle Thursday, chatting against a soundtrack of squeaking sneakers from the teenagers playing basketball nearby.
Animals shared the space, too. Carlos Barraza, who is homeless, said he visits the center daily so his aging dog, Rocky, can have access to air conditioning. “I didn’t know where else to go,” he said.
Even people who have air conditioners may visit a cooling center as a cost-saving measure.
“I think that as the electricity gets more and more expensive, we have some folks where the bill is a true burden,” said Kate Henry, the administrator for emergency preparedness services in Fresno.
As long as there is working air conditioning, all kinds of public facilities can be turned into cooling centers, often with the addition of bottled water, snacks or extra staffing. But there can be logistical hurdles, Conlon said.
“A library or a recreation center — often times, these are public, taxpayer-funded facilities,” she said. “How can we fund something like that? How do you staff something like that? What’s the security like for a place that needs to be running after hours?”
Even with the logistics sorted out, some cooling centers may struggle to attract visitors, as they are often seen as being drably municipal. People may gravitate toward places like malls and movie theaters, or just endure the heat from home.
“How do we reimagine cooling centers so that they are desirable to go to?” asked Elena Grossman, a lecturer on climate adaptation with the Yale School of Public Health.
If the current forecasts are an indication, municipalities will be grappling with these questions for some time. Another two dozen daily temperature records could be broken to begin the weekend. The extreme heat will push into the Midwest and the East by early next week, with heat indexes as high as 110 expected in the Philadelphia area and in the low 100s in New York.
Around the world, each of the past 13 months has been the warmest on record for that month of the year, and last year ranked as the warmest ever recorded.
In Phoenix, city officials decided last year, after another sizzling summer that broke records, that it would be a good idea to keep cooling centers open late. This year, a library and a senior center have been set up to allow overnight stays, and a few other facilities are open during the evening. Since May, those centers have already logged more than 12,000 visits, mostly from people who do not have homes.
“We figure, any person that we can get off the street and out of the sun, and put them in an air-conditioned room with a bottle of water, is another life saved,” said Brian Lee, the city’s director of emergency management.
Naomi Holton, 61, is a regular at these cooling centers. She lost her apartment in Phoenix a month ago. “Basically, you just go from one cooling center to the other,” she said. “When one closes, you go to the next one.”
About two hours south, in Tucson, some people sought refuge at a place unlike many others: a cooling center made of old shipping containers. The containers were once part of a short-lived Arizona-Mexico border wall ordered by former Gov. Doug Ducey that his successor, Gov. Katie Hobbs, transformed into solar-powered spaces where people can escape the grueling heat.
Now, the containers — two long, narrow pods — offer places where residents can nap, watch TV and relax with sack lunches from a community kitchen.
The cooling center opened for the first time in late June, said Erica Dallo, a city employee, and it has been busy since. “Since we opened, there’s only been one day where we didn’t have anybody,” she said.
Some cities and their residents have turned to other creative solutions to stay cool. After all, essentially any place — a mall, a park, a store — can be used as a cooling center if it helps people beat the heat.
“There are places in communities that people just go to, and feel safe going to,” Grossman said. “They feel welcome there. And it’s not necessarily called a cooling center, but it serves as a cooling center.”
Mobile, Alabama, has seven city-designated indoor cooling centers, but officials have effectively turned some outdoor parks into cooling stations by installing misters and splash pads where children can play in the water.
On Friday afternoon at Tricentennial Park in Mobile, more than a dozen children took advantage of a new splash pad under sweltering conditions and a heat index of 99.
Lataisha Cook, a day care employee, said she and her colleague, Alicia Barnett, had resorted to creative measures to keep the children hydrated this summer. “We had water balloons, big pitchers of water, and if it was too hot, we simply kept these kids inside,” Barnett said.
And in sweltering Las Vegas, Darrell Durdin’s friends helped her endure the peak of the heat wave after her air conditioner died. They donated two swamp coolers, three fans and a mobile air-conditioning unit to cool down her condominium.
With people often opting to stay at home during a heat wave, many municipalities emphasize the importance of old-fashioned neighborliness. “A lot of the messaging now around extreme heat events is to check in on your neighbors,” Conlon said.
Durdin, an Instacart driver, has also found refuge in her air-conditioned car while making deliveries, and in shops where she picks up items for customers.
“Going into a grocery store is like heaven,” she said.
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