A punishing heat dome will test Phoenix’s strategy to reduce heat-related deaths

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1. By the time the patient reached David Sklar, an emergency physician at Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, on the first day of June, his heart had stopped beating. Temperatures in the city peaked at 107 degrees that day, and the patient was experiencing heat stroke, his body temperature reaching 110 degrees, the physician recalled.

   It would be the first heat-related death that Sklar saw in 2024. The patient’s core temperature hit levels so high that organ systems failed.

   In Maricopa County, four fatalities [have been confirmed](https://www.maricopa.gov/1858/Heat-Surveillance) so far this year in which heat either caused or contributed to the death, while 48 other deaths are under investigation. After a summer of extreme temperatures last year, there were a striking 645 heat-related deaths in the county, according to a [report](https://www.maricopa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/5796) by the Maricopa County Department of Public Health — a more than 50 percent increase from 2022, and 10 times the number of deaths from 2014.

   As temperatures [this week reach record levels](https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/06/06/western-us-heat-wave/?itid=lk_inline_manual_8) in Arizona and other parts of the Western United States, Sklar said he is worried that another deadly summer could be underway.

   Read more here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/06/07/phoenix-heat-deaths-plans-preparation/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/06/07/phoenix-heat-deaths-plans-preparation/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)