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Mexican farm worker Avelino Vazquez Navarro didn\u2019t have air conditioning in the motor home where he died last month in Washington state as temperatures surged into the triple digits.<\/p>\n
For the last dozen years, the 61-year-old spent much of the year working near Pasco, Washington, sending money to his wife and daughters in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, and traveling back every Christmas.<\/p>\n
Now, the family is raising money to bring his remains home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this motor home would have had AC and it was running, then it most likely would have helped,\u201d said Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGary, who determined Vazquez Navarro\u2019s death was heat-related, with alcohol intoxication as a contributing cause.<\/p>\n
Most heat-related deaths involve homeless people living outdoors. But those who die inside without sufficient cooling also are vulnerable, typically older than 60, living alone and\u00a0with limited income<\/a>.<\/p>\n Underscoring the\u00a0inequities<\/a>\u00a0around energy and access to air conditioning as\u00a0summers grow hotter<\/a>, many victims are\u00a0Black, Indigenous or Latino<\/a>, like Vazquez Navarro.<\/p>\n \u201cAir conditioning is not a luxury, it\u2019s a necessity,\u201d said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors\u2019 Association, which represents state energy assistance programs. \u201cIt\u2019s a public health issue and it\u2019s an affordability issue.\u201d<\/p>\n People living in mobile homes or in aging trailers and RVs are especially likely to lack proper cooling. Nearly a quarter of the indoor heat deaths in Arizona\u2019s Maricopa County last year were in those kinds of dwellings, which are transformed into a broiling tin can by the blazing desert sun.<\/p>\n \u201cMobile homes can really heat up because they don\u2019t always have the best insulation and are often made of metal,\u201d said Dana Kennedy, AARP director in Arizona, where many heat-related deaths occur.<\/p>\n Research<\/a>\u00a0shows mobile home dwellers are particularly at risk in blistering hot Phoenix, where 113-degree Fahrenheit (45 Celsius) weather is\u00a0forecast<\/a>\u00a0for this weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are exposed to the elements more than in other housing,\u201d said Patricia Sol\u00eds, executive director of the\u00a0Knowledge Exchange for Resilience<\/a>\u00a0at Arizona State University, who worked on\u00a0mapping<\/a>\u00a0hot weather impacts on mobile home parks for a\u00a0state preparedness plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n Worse, some parks bar residents from making modifications that could cool their homes, citing esthetic concerns. A new Arizona law required parks for the first time this summer to let residents install cooling methods such as window units, shade awnings and shutters.<\/p>\n In Arizona\u2019s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, 156 of\u00a0645 heat-related deaths<\/a>\u00a0last year occurred indoors in uncooled environments. In most cases, a unit was present but was not working, was without electricity or turned off, public health officials said.<\/p>\n One victim was Shirley Marie Kouplen, who died after being overcome by high temperatures inside her Phoenix mobile home amid a\u00a0heat wave<\/a>\u00a0when the extension cord providing her electricity was unplugged.<\/p>\n Emergency responders recorded the 70-year-old widow\u2019s body temperature at 107.1 F (41.7 C). Kouplen, who was diabetic and had high blood pressure, was rushed to a hospital, where she died.<\/p>\n Kouplen apparently was struggling financially, if the shabby condition of her mobile home was any indication. It still sits on Lot 60, surrounded by a chain-link fence with a locked gate and a dirt driveway overgrown with weeds.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how the cord got unplugged, if Kouplen had an electricity account or how she got her power.<\/p>\n \u201cLosing your air conditioning is now a life-threatening event,\u201d said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who grew up in hot, humid Houston in the 1970s. \u201cYou didn\u2019t want to lose your air conditioning, but it wasn\u2019t going to kill you. And now it is.\u201d<\/p>\n Arizona\u2019s regulated utilities have been banned since 2022 from cutting off power during the summer, following the 2018 death of a 72-year-old woman after Arizona Public Service disconnected her electricity over a $51 debt.<\/p>\n Ann Porter, spokesperson for Arizona Public Service, which provides electricity to homes in the park where Kouplen lived, said \u201cdue to privacy concerns\u201d the company could not say if she had an account at the time of her death or in the past. Porter said the utility does not cut power from June 1 to Oct. 15.<\/p>\n Cutoffs can occur after those dates if mounting debts are not paid.<\/p>\n Arizona is among 19 states with shut-off protections, leaving about half of the U.S. population without safeguards against losing electricity during the summer, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association said in a\u00a0new study<\/a>.<\/p>\n Almost 20% of very-low income families have no air conditioning at all, especially in places like Washington state where they weren\u2019t commonly installed before climate-fueled heat waves grew increasingly stronger, frequent and longer lasting.<\/p>\n In the Pacific Northwest, several hundred people died during a 2021 heat wave, prompting Portland, Oregon, to launch\u00a0a program<\/a>\u00a0to provide portable cooling units to vulnerable, low-income people.<\/p>\n Chicago, better known for its cold winters, saw a heat wave kill 739 mostly older people over five days in 1995. Amid high humidity and temperatures over 100 degrees (37.7 C), most victims had no air conditioning or couldn\u2019t afford to turn on their units.<\/p>\n In 2022, Chicago adopted a cooling ordinance after three women died in their apartments in a building for older adults on an unusually warm spring day. Certain residential buildings must now have at least one air conditioned common area for cooling when the heat index exceeds 80 degrees (26.6 C) and cooling is unavailable in individual units.<\/p>\n Nonprofits in historically hotter areas like Arizona also are trying to better address the inequities low-income people face during the sweltering summers. The Phoenix-based community agency\u00a0Wildfire<\/a>\u00a0recently raised money to buy over $2 million worth of air conditioning equipment to help 150 households statewide over three years, Executive Director Kelly McGowan said.<\/p>\n Laws protect renters in some places. Phoenix landlords must ensure air conditioning units cool to 82 degrees (28 C) or below and that evaporative coolers lower the temperature to 86 degrees (30 C).<\/p>\n Palm Springs, California, and Las Vegas, both desert cities, have ordinances requiring landlords to offer air conditioning in rental dwellings. Dallas, where temperatures can pass 110 degrees (43.3 C) in the summer, has a similar law.<\/p>\n But most renters pay their own electricity costs, leaving them to agonize whether they can afford to even turn on the cooling or how high to set the thermostat.<\/p>\n A new report\u00a0estimates<\/a>\u00a0the average cost for U.S. families to keep cool from June to September will grow nationwide by 7.9% this year, from $661 in 2023 to $719 this summer.<\/p>\n Wolfe noted the federal\u00a0Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program<\/a>, which grants money to states to help families pay for heating and cooling, is underfunded, with 80% going to heat homes in winter.<\/p>\n At Kouplen\u2019s mobile home park, Spanish-speaking neighbors had little interaction with \u201cSe\u00f1ora Shirley,\u201d who used a walker to take her two small dogs outside. Neighbors said the animals were adopted after her death.<\/p>\n