Thread by @latimes

Read the stories from our project on the dangers of extreme heat and how California struggles to respond: latimes.com/extremeheat

https://twitter.com/ReportingHealth/status/1453063451010551811

Extreme heat is one of the deadliest consequences of global warming.

But California chronically undercounts the death toll and has failed to address the growing threat of heat-related illness and death, according to a @latimes investigation. latimes.com/projects/calif…

Between 2010 and 2019, the hottest decade on record, California’s official data from death certificates attributed 599 deaths to heat exposure.

But a Times analysis found that the true toll is probably six times higher.
latimes.com/environment/st…

California’s undercount is one of the ways it overlooks the threat posed by heat waves, even as climate change delivers them more frequently, more intensely and with deadlier consequences.
latimes.com/environment/st…

Each year, extreme heat kills more Americans than any other climate-fueled hazard, including hurricanes, floods and wildfires, but it gets far less attention.

Its harms fall most heavily on the poor, the infirm, the very young and the elderly.
latimes.com/environment/st…

People die in stifling homes, apartments and trailers they can’t afford to air-condition.

They collapse while working in the sun at jobs they can’t afford to lose.

What for some is a nuisance is for others a threat to survival.
latimes.com/environment/st…

Fueled by customers’ growing addiction to one-day delivery and a pandemic-driven surge in online shopping, demand for warehouses has sky-rocketed.

But extreme heat is endangering California warehouse workers, who often labor without air conditioning. latimes.com/environment/st…

In Silver Lake the surface temperature was 96.4 degrees.

Less than a mile away in a corner of East Hollywood, it was 102.7 degrees.

Such “thermal inequities” checker the landscape of L.A. and other cities as they heat up from climate change.
latimes.com/california/sto…