Texas couple dies in home after air conditioning failure
chron.com
chron.com
But parking yourself in a trailer is not a good approach. They're so poorly insulated it's basically a solar oven until the sun goes down, like being trapped in a hot car. Even with working AC, that's just going to cost you quite a lot in power since the heat keeps coming in too easily.
If I were stuck living in such a trailer park without funds, I'd likely spend my summers outside in swim trunks, under an umbrella, with a water-mister+fan aimed at me. They even sell such things integrated for the purpose, but you can trivially improvise something.
A Moab bar+cafe I visited in July had an industrial mister+fan the size of a refrigerator that cooled the entire bar despite having one whole wall of roll-top doors open to the >100F outside.
If you've crossed the wet-bulb temperature due to extreme humidity though, that's a different ball game. TFA didn't mention if that was a factor here, I don't think Texas had it that bad humidity-wise in the recent heat waves, did they?
They were in Harris County so that is a coastal county where temperatures during the summer are oppressively hot due to high humidity. Back in June when these people passed, the humidity and unseasonably high heat combined to make it very dangerous for people with health problems to be outside during the daytime. Even healthy people were urged to stay indoors due to the high heat index. It gets nasty on the Gulf Coast and Baytown, where they lived, is a refinery town so the air quality is bad anyway.
It’s pretty bad. Harris county is humid. If you’ve ever been in Houston in spring/summer, you know it’s like living in someone’s armpit. Air conditioners are the only reason it’s even livable at this population level in the south.
The last few months have been even hotter than usual, so combined with even >70% humidity, it's been sufficiently lethal that going without AC for long is a death sentence (especially for the vulnerable like the elderly).
I already thought about cities needing to organize "cool shelters", but it might become a requirement.
It seems there are no viable statistics for those kinds of death.
I live on the hottest part of France and I already planned to move to a colder cheap city. I'm expecting people to progressively do the same.
279 died last year. I don't know how reliable texas tribune is but they cite their sources. Is that not viable statistics?
TT does original reporting that's quoted in other papers.
PS: TT is ~9 blocks due west of where I hang my hat. :)
Greg Casar, our rep for TX-35, is on Democracy Now! every few months because he's sane, sensible, courageous, and on the side of decency such as ensuring federal standards for health and safety when the state decides to preempt local regulations.
i quite contributing when the format changed from simple list of articles to current "responsive" format. takes way to long to scan articles, which i once did daily.
the pain never ends.
I think it will become a necessity in many places
But,
> her father's mobility issues probably made them cautious about leaving the house even as temperatures rose inside
Another method I've used was to point a carpet dryer which is just a big portable blower to a window to blow all the heat out of the house and pull in cooler air from the other windows in the evening so I could sleep. I never bothered to install HVAC. I've since moved to a much cooler place and have an earth bermed home.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Misters-Outside-Nozzles-Umbrella-Back...
Earlier this year, I moved to a boat. No A/C, but deck is painted white (as with most boats, for good reason) & if temps get too uncomfortable, water for cooling / swimming is always nearby. :-)
I suspect significant % of world population might be forced to seek creative solutions like this in years ahead...
It’s amazing to see a sun rejection film in person that is so effective it is cold to touch on a blazing hot day. Installing this stuff city wide would be awesome.
The tops of buildings can use titanium dioxide white paint.
All the 'little' bits help. If nothing else, to reduce A/C power draw.
Without air conditioning, it wouldn't be surprising for the heat and humidity inside the trailer to surpass the human body's capacity to maintain body temperature.
Texas has been seeing unbearably hot weather, even for Texas, the past few months. High humidity is the norm.
The weather is literally lethal and cannot be survived by human bodies without breaks/cooling. Sweat alone isn't enough. Heat strokes are inevitable, especially when you're elderly.
(As an example, if my AC stops working during a Texas summer, the temperature in my relatively nice apartment will climb to the 90s F with high enough humidity that sweating barely keeps me cool.)
Though these people seemed to be retirement age it sounds from the story like they are tied to their home due to mobility issues so that makes it less likely that they were living in an RV or camper van. The costs of replacing an AC for a mobile home in an established park would be high enough that they would probably need to get a loan if they are on a fixed income since the home likely has central heat/AC. If they had been in an RV or camper van the costs of replacing those units is considerably lower.
This is very sad to me. It sounds like their central heat/AC unit failed and they decided to replace it instead of going to their big box store and buying a window mounted AC unit that would function for the summer allowing them an opportunity to set aside some money to pay for repairs or replacement of the main system unit. Poor people in a rich nation. Over a barrel needing repairs or replacement of an expensive item that is critical for survival this time of year.
both of them got heart failure from temperature gradient