In June 1995 I was living in Chicago and my wife had just given birth to our second child, a daughter. My mother-in-law was staying with us helping care for the family.
Then the temperature started to rise. For a week temperatures reached above 100 degrees. Combined with Chicago's humidity it began to make even healthy people feel weak and ill.
Initially there was advice about the elderly finding shelter in air conditioned community centers, and nice images of the fire department opening hydrants to allow kids in neighborhoods without air conditioning to cool off.
Then the power began going out across the city and people started to die by the hundreds. Seniors were found dead in their rooms, homeless and transients were dying on the streets, and people with medical issues were dying from accute aggravation of their conditions.
Our daughter was only a few days old when our power went out over the 4th of July holiday and the temperature in the house went over 100 degrees. My wife was recovering from child birth and my daughter was in those fragile early days. My mother-in-law was in her mid-60's and was starting to show signs of stress.
After 12 hours we were all feeling sick and the news made the situation sound catastrophic. We packed up the family and began shuttling between family members' houses one step ahead of, or behind, the rolling blackouts.
We were lucky to have family with AC, but hundreds of thousands of other's weren't as lucky and over 700 died as a direct result of the heat wave and power outages.
I believe global warming is caused by human activity, and I believe that with our fragile power grid across the US and the world we are soon going to see a lot more stories like this. Remember the same story ocuring in France a few summers ago?
I hope this blog and other aforts to learn from the past and prepare for the future can help turn the tide of public apathy and help us avoid a future where such catastrophic heat waves are not what we can expect every summer.