Phoenix Blackout Could Send Thousands To Emergency Rooms
Research about a prolonged blackout during Phoenix’s extraordinarily hot summer can be very grim. One says 800,000 people could be sick, and emergency rooms would be overwhelmed. That forecast may be overreaching, but the consequences of a blackout would be catastrophic.
The journal Environmental Science and Technology published a research paper that forecast. The New York Times published a summary. “The new analysis found that Phoenix, which is heavily reliant on air-conditioning to keep residents cool in the desert heat, would experience immense loss of life and illness if a citywide blackout during a heat wave lasted for two days, with power gradually restored over the next three days.”
The forecast indicates that 789,600 people will require emergency room visits. Holding all of them would be completely impossible. One expert told the Times, “I describe this as probably the greatest climate-related hazard we can imagine: a blackout during a heat wave.”
Is the scenario a wild exaggeration? Perhaps not. Last year, the temperature in Phoenix was over 100 degrees F for more than 100 days. It has already been above that level for 20 days, and it is only the start of summer.
Among the challenges for Phoenix is that hundreds of homeless people and thousands of people without air conditioning need to be housed by the city in areas that do have cooling systems. The scenario from the reasonsers assumes that only a few people have access to AC.
Depending on the source, people start to suffer from heat stroke when the outside air reaches 90 degrees F. In a prolonged Phoenix blackout, it is certainly possible that tens of thousands of people would have this level of exposure
Phoenix is not the only city where this issue may arise. Temperatures in La Vegas are nearly as hot. However, the duration is shorter. Nonetheless e a blackout would be dangerous if it happened during the worst of the Phoenix summer.
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