Heat deaths of people without air conditioning, often in mobile homes, underscore energy inequity
PHOENIX — Mexican farm worker Avelino Vazquez Navarro had no air conditioning in the camper where he died last month in Washington state as temperatures soared into triple digits.
For the past 12 years, the 61-year-old has spent much of the year working near Pasco, Washington, sending money to his wife and daughters in the Pacific state of Nayarit, Mexico, and traveling home each Christmas.
Now the family is raising money to bring his remains home.
“If this RV had air conditioning and they had turned it on, it probably would have helped,” said Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGary, who determined that Vazquez Navarro’s death was due to heat, with alcohol intoxication a contributing cause.
Most heat-related deaths are homeless people living outdoors. But those who die indoors without adequate cooling are also vulnerable, usually over 60, living alone and with limited income.
Underlining the inequalities around energy and access to air conditioning as summers are getting hottermany victims are Black, Native or Latinolike Vazquez Navarro.
“Air conditioning is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, which represents state energy assistance programs. “It’s a public health issue and an affordability issue.”
People living in mobile homes and older trailers and RVs are especially at risk for lack of proper cooling. Nearly a quarter of indoor heat-related deaths in Maricopa County, Arizona, last year occurred in such homes, which are turned into scorching tin cans by the blazing desert sun.
“Mobile homes can get quite warm because they don’t always have the best insulation and are often made of metal,” said Dana Kennedy, director of AARP in Arizona, where many heat-related deaths occur.
Research shows that mobile home residents are at particularly high risk in sweltering Phoenix, where temperatures reach 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). prediction for this weekend.
“People are more exposed to the elements than in other homes,” said Patricia Solís, executive director of the Knowledge exchange for resilience at Arizona State University, who worked on mapping consequences of warm weather for mobile home parks for a state preparedness plan.
Worse, some parks are prohibiting residents from making modifications that could cool their homes, citing aesthetic concerns. A new law in Arizona this summer required parks for the first time to require residents to install cooling methods such as window units, shade canopies and shutters.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, home to Phoenix, 156 of 645 heat-related deaths last year indoors in uncooled environments. In most cases, a unit was present but not working, there was no electricity or it was turned off, public health officials said.
One of the victims was Shirley Marie Kouplen, who died after being overcome by high temperatures in her Phoenix mobile home amid a heat wave when the extension cord that supplied her with electricity was unplugged.
Emergency responders recorded the 70-year-old widow’s body temperature as 107.1 F (41.7 C). Kouplen, who had diabetes and high blood pressure, was rushed to the hospital, where she died.
Kouplen was apparently struggling financially, if the dilapidated state 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.
It is unclear how the plug was pulled, whether Kouplen had an electricity bill or how she obtained power.
“Losing your air conditioning is now a life-threatening event,” said Texas A&Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at M University, grew up in hot, humid Houston in the 1970s. “You didn’t want to lose your air conditioning, but it wasn’t going to kill you either. And now it is.”
Since 2022, Arizona utilities have been prohibited from shutting off power in the summer, after a 72-year-old woman died in 2018 after Arizona Public Service shut off her electricity over a $51 debt.
Ann Porter, a spokeswoman for Arizona Public Service, which provides electricity to homes in the park where Kouplen lived, said the company could not say whether she had an account at the time of her death or in the past “due to privacy concerns.” Porter said the utility will not shut off power from June 1 to Oct. 15.
After these dates, a payment freeze may occur if the accumulating debts are not paid.
Arizona is one of 19 states with shutoff protections, leaving about half the U.S. population without protection from summer power outages, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association said in a report. new study.
Nearly 20 percent of very low-income households have no air conditioning at all, especially in places like Washington state, where they weren’t widely installed before climate-induced heat waves became stronger, more frequent, and longer.
Hundreds of people died in the Pacific Northwest during a 2021 heat wave, prompting Portland, Oregon, to a programme to provide portable cooling units to vulnerable, low-income people.
In Chicago, known for its cold winters, 739 people, mostly elderly, died in five days during a heat wave in 1995. High humidity and temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit left most of the victims without air conditioning or unable to afford to turn on their appliances.
In 2022, Chicago passed a cooling ordinance after three women died in their apartments in a senior living building on an unusually warm spring day. Certain residential buildings are now required to have at least one common area air-conditioned for cooling when the heat index exceeds 80 F (26.6 C) and cooling is not available in individual units.
Nonprofits in historically warmer areas like Arizona are also trying to address the inequities that low-income people face during the sultry summers. The Phoenix-based community agency Forest fire recently raised money to purchase more than $2 million worth of air conditioning equipment to help 150 homes in the state over the next three years, said Executive Director Kelly McGowan.
Laws protect renters in some places. Landlords in Phoenix must ensure that air conditioning units cool to 82 F (28 C) or lower and that evaporative coolers cool to 86 F (30 C).
Palm Springs, California, and Las Vegas, both desert cities, have ordinances requiring landlords to provide air conditioning in rental properties. Dallas, where summer temperatures can exceed 110 F (43.3 C), has a similar law.
But most renters pay their own electricity bills, leaving them wondering whether they can turn on the cooling or how high to set the thermostat.
A new report estimates The average cost for U.S. families to stay cool from June through September will rise 7.9% nationwide this year, from $661 in 2023 to $719 this summer.
Wolf noted the federal Energy Assistance Program for Low Income Householdswhich provides money to states to help families pay for heating and cooling, faces a funding shortfall, with 80% of that going to heating homes in the winter.
In the Kouplen mobile home park, Spanish-speaking neighbors had little interaction with “Señora Shirley,” who used a walker to carry her two small dogs outside. Neighbors said the animals were adopted after her death.
Couple was to bury in north Phoenix at the Arizona National Memorial Cemetery, alongside her husband, JD D. Kouplen, who died in 2020.
“Never forget,” reads their shared marker.