Extreme weather phenomena such as heatwaves, which have become more frequent in the past two decades, occurred throughout history even before global warming and climate change.
Obviously, a century or so ago, mankind was not equipped to fight and protect themselves from extreme natural phenomena such as heatwaves or droughts. For instance, air conditioning had not yet been invented when the 1896 heatwave hit New York leaving behind about 1,500 dead.
Moreover, it was difficult to predict weather phenomena with the means available at the time. Consequently, there was no way to warn the population of upcoming rapid hazardous climate changes.
The Great 1896 New York heatwave
At the end of the 19th century, New York City was home to about 3 million people. Most of them lived in the densely packed tenements of the Lower East Side and other low-income neighborhoods. Families of five or six people lived together in a single room with no air conditioning, little air circulation, and no running water.
The men living in the tenements worked six days a week, most of them doing manual work out in the sun. The tenements were so crowded that some people were forced to sleep on the roof or on the sidewalk in front of the house.
The heatwave that hit the Big Apple in August 1896 lasted 10 days, turning the tenements into low burning furnaces. City authorities had banned sleeping outside in parks or squares. so the people in the Lower East Side were forced to sleep in their bedrooms crammed next to each other. It was not simply uncomfortable but next to impossible to live under such horrid conditions. The relentless heat became a death sentence to some 1,500 people.
Many of the dead were people who slept on rooftops. They would roll over in their sleep and fall off the roof to their death. Some died of heat stroke, while others succumbed to heat-related ailments. More than 1,000 horses also died from the excessive heat.
The city government did little to address the disaster. Only on the last day of the heatwave did the mayor call an emergency meeting. In the meeting, the unpopular police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt proposed calling on his police force to distribute free ice to the tenement neighborhoods and provide ambulance services to the sick. Some historians claim the action he took on the last day of the heatwave salvaged his political career and ultimately helped propel him to the White House.
The United States’ 1911 East Coast heatwave
In July 1911, along the East Coast of the United States, temperatures rose into the 90s for several days. It was a heatwave that drove many people into the brink of madness, while killing 211 people in New York alone.
The New England Historical Society webpage describes it vividly:
“During 11 hellish days, horses dropped in the street and babies didn’t wake up from their naps. Boats in Providence Harbor oozed pitch and began to take on water. Tar in the streets bubbled like hot syrup. Trees shed their leaves, grass turned to dust and cows’ milk started to dry up.”
Several East Coast states reached record temperatures on July 4th: 103 degrees in Portland, 104 in Boston, 105 in Vernon, Vt., and 106 in Nashua, N.H. and Bangor, Maine. In Providence, Rhode Island, temperatures rose 11 degrees in a single half hour. At least 200 people died from drowning, seeking relief in rivers, lakes, ponds, and the ocean. Still more died from heat stroke. The 1911 heat wave was possibly the worst weather disaster in New England’s history, with estimates of the death toll being as high as 2,000.
In New York, even though temperatures never quite reached 100 degrees in the first two weeks of July, the city was again poorly equipped to handle the heat. The living spaces were the same as in the summer of 1896, and poor ventilation exacerbated the problem, ultimately leading to the death of people of all ages, with babies as young as two weeks old succumbing to the heat.
Across the East Coast, people left their apartments seeking a breath of coolness in parks, sleeping under the trees. In Boston, 5,000 people chose to spend the night on Boston Common rather than risk dying in their sleep of suffocation at home.
In the streets of New York there was chaos. Heat exhaustion caused people out on the streets to hallucinate. The New-York Tribune reported that a man “partly crazed by the heat,” attacked a policeman with a meat cleaver.
Authorities across the East Coast tried to help people handle the heat. They turned hydrants on to flush the streets. In Hartford, Connecticut, ferries and trolleys rode around the city for free so that people could feel the breeze.
Finally, two thunderstorms within days put an end to the heatwave but not without cost. In Boston, people were either swept away by the flood or struck by lightning, while property damage added to the disaster.
The 1936 heatwave
The timing of the 1936 heatwave in 12 North American states could not have been worse. Coming out of the Great Depression that was followed by a long drought, the high temperatures seemed like a final blow that left some 5,000 people dead.
Temperatures in Springfield, Illinois reached 100 degrees and lasted for 12 straight days. As far north as North Dakota, temperatures rose to 120 degrees. In New York, a high of 106 degrees was recorded. In New York City, 21 people including children, drowned after jumping into the water to cool off despite not knowing how to swim. Furthermore, 75 seamstresses at a single factory fell into a collective, heat-induced swoon.
In a horrific report about the 1936 heatwave, in the Midwest that had been battling a grasshopper infestation for several years, people witnessed broiled dead bodies of grasshoppers dropping from the sky like hail.
In Detroit, one of the cities that suffered most, doctors and nurses in hospitals collapsed from the heat and exhaustion while treating patients. Hospital morgues were overrun with bodies.
The 1995 Chicago heatwave
The July 1995 Chicago heatwave lasted five days, leading to 739 heat-related deaths. Most of the victims of the heat were elderly, poor residents of the city who either had no air conditioning or had air conditioning but could not afford to run it. Overall, however, the impact of the heatwave exposed the city’s inadequate response system. The phenomenon affected the wider Midwestern region, with additional fatalities in both St. Louis, Missouri and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
On July 13th, the temperature in the city hit 106 degrees, and the heat index, which takes humidity into account to gauge how hot it actually feels, surpassed 120 degrees. In those five days, Chicago’s urban infrastructure collapsed as excessive air conditioner use maxed out the power grid. People opened so many hydrants to cool off that, as a result, several communities lost water pressure. Train rails buckled under the heat, causing massive commuter delays.
Hospitals were overwhelmed by the numbers of people flooding in suffering heat-related ailments. Likewise, hospital morgues filled up, generating a backlog of bodies. After the tragedy, researchers found that most of those who died were older men who lived alone. Four years later, when another heatwave hit the city, it found the infrastructure better equipped to deal with it. Ultimately, authorities responded quickly in 1999, limiting the death toll to just over 100.
