At least 25 people are dead across the United States after a record-breaking heat dome parked itself over the eastern half of the country during the Fourth of July weekend. More than 140 million people were still under active heat alerts on Sunday. And yes, while all of that was happening, Donald Trump's Great American State Fair on the National Mall had to temporarily shut down after sending 44 visitors to medical tents.
What Is Actually Happening Out There
More than 20 states reported temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit as a massive heat dome settled over the country's eastern half, according to The Guardian. The National Weather Service confirmed cool air from the north should push some of those extreme temperatures down in the coming days, but the damage is already done.
This wasn't a fringe weather event. This was a catastrophic, multi-state emergency playing out across what was supposed to be a holiday weekend. Parades got cancelled. Festivals shut down. Hospitals filled up. People died in their own homes because they didn't have air conditioning.
New Jersey Got Hit the Hardest
Officials in New Jersey believe extreme heat contributed to the deaths of 22 people across 10 counties, mostly in the central and northern parts of the state, The Guardian reports. Many of those individuals were found in their homes without air conditioning, outside their residences, on the street, or inside parked cars.
The New Jersey Department of Public Health did not mince words: "This is not a typical summer heatwave. This type of heat can quickly become life-threatening to humans and to animals of all ages." The deaths spanned people from their mid-30s all the way to their 80s. This wasn't just a story about elderly people with pre-existing conditions, though they were hit hardest. This reached everyone.
The preliminary findings point to heat as the cause, though the state's chief medical examiner will make the final determination for each individual case. That process takes time. The heat did not.
The Faces Behind the Numbers
In Mississippi, 74-year-old Mitchell Ray Cooley died from heat exposure on Thursday after going missing. His body was found the next day behind a gas station, according to the Hinds County coroner. The coroner's office noted that Cooley suffered from a medical condition that impaired his judgment and found no indication of foul play. He was simply outside in the heat, and it killed him.
Also in Mississippi, 83-year-old Martha Irene Van Egmond fell in her garden on June 27th. Her husband Rick tried to help her up and fell too. The two of them lay there, unable to get up, calling out for help for hours in the heat. Two men from a nearby apartment complex eventually came, The Guardian reports, but it was too late for Martha. Her husband told local outlet WAPT that she died surrounded by flowers, doing what she loved. Hinds County's chief death investigator attributed her death to the combination of the heat and her age.
In Cook County, Illinois, one heat-related death was reported, with organic cardiovascular disease listed as the cause and heat stress as a contributing factor, according to a government spokesperson who spoke to NBC News.
Meanwhile, at the Celebration
While emergency services in Washington DC had treated 51 people for heat-related issues by 8pm on Saturday, with 12 hospitalized, Donald Trump was giving a speech at rain-dampened celebrations in the capital. The Independence Day parade in DC was cancelled due to the blistering heat.
Trump's so-called Great American State Fair on the National Mall shut down temporarily on Friday after 44 visitors were treated for heat-related illnesses, The Guardian reports. Let that sit for a second. The president's signature holiday celebration had to close because it was making people sick. The Fourth of July, on the 250th anniversary of the country's founding, punctuated by a festival that couldn't stay open in the heat.
The Fifa World Cup final is scheduled for July 19th in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Whether that area will have fully recovered from this heat event by then remains to be seen.
What Scientists Are Saying
Scientists cited by The Guardian are pointing to this heatwave as exactly the kind of event the climate crisis produces at increasing frequency and intensity. Extreme heat, they warn, is a direct signal that greenhouse gas pollution needs to come down. The physics here are not complicated and they are not in dispute.
The National Weather Service is urging people to drink fluids, stay out of the sun, use air conditioning, and check on their neighbors. These are the basic recommendations. They work, when people can follow them. The problem is that a lot of people in this country cannot follow them, because they don't have air conditioning, or they work outside, or they live alone, or they are poor. The heat does not care about any of that.
The Dingo Take
Here's the thing about a heatwave that kills 25 people over a holiday weekend: it is not a freak accident. It is not bad luck. Scientists have been telling us for decades exactly how this works, and exactly where it leads if we keep burning fossil fuels and electing people who think climate change is a hoax invented to hurt the economy. We are now living in the part of the story where the consequences stop being abstract.
And the imagery here is almost too on the nose. The country throws a 250th birthday party for itself, and the heat shuts half of it down. Trump's Great American State Fair hospitalizes its own guests. Meanwhile, in Mississippi and New Jersey, people without air conditioning are dying alone in their homes or in parked cars while the festivities try to carry on. That is the story of this country right now, compressed into a single weekend.
The NWS says cooler air is coming. That's good. But cooler air doesn't undo 25 deaths, and it doesn't change the fact that next summer will probably be worse. The summer after that too. This is the direction we're going, and we are going there fast, with an administration that has spent the last year dismantling the federal agencies that track, warn about, and respond to exactly this kind of disaster. Enjoy the holiday, everybody.
