Marta Segura knows it can be hard to think of the heat in Los Angeles as an emergency, either because your air conditioner is running loud and you have a cold drink in your hand, or because you don’t have enough money for food, let alone the electric bill.
But she also knows that, of all the natural disasters caused by a warming world, heat — which she is tasked with combating — has killed more people than any other climate-related cause.
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5 million people around the world die every year from heat-related illnesses. But whereas hurricanes and wildfires kill people almost immediately, heat rarely takes credit for its work. Persistently high temperatures can increase deaths that are eventually attributed to other causes: heart attacks, asthma attacks, overdoses.
Nearly 4,000 Californians died as a result of extreme temperatures between 2010 and 2019. And summers are getting even hotter.
As is Chief Heating Officer For the city of Los Angeles, it’s now Segura’s job to ensure we don’t lose sight — neither from those who have already been hit by the heat, nor from the danger that lies ahead for the rest of us.
‘His deep engagement with the affected communities is something I admire.’
— Jane Gilbert, chief heating officer for Miami-Dade County, Florida
Segura works much like the Heat, taking whatever space is available and subtly changing things up.
his position was created in response to a dramatic increase in extreme heat events in June 2022. At the time she was the director of the city’s Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, a position she still holds.
The climate office has six employees and an annual budget of $1 million — less than what the city spends on climate change. road cleaning suppliesBut the way Segura sees it, things don’t need his office’s approval to count as resolved.
People across city and county government — in addition to local nonprofits and universities — are working to make life in hot Los Angeles bearable. Segura says his role as chief heating officer is to find them and make sure their collective efforts are focused on getting services to the people and places that need them most.
Los Angeles is the third U.S. city to appoint a CHO, after Phoenix and Miami. Segura’s counterparts say what makes his approach to the job different is his deep connection to the communities most affected by the heat.
“She’s taken it to another level,” said jane gilbert“His deep engagement with the communities affected is something I admire,” said Dr. , chief heating officer for Miami-Dade County, Florida.
Segura, 60, recognizes her own family in the people she serves. She grew up in San Jose, the second of three daughters whose parents immigrated from Mexico.
Both of her parents suffered heat-related injuries while working. Her mother once fainted at the Del Monte cannery when she was not given water during a heat shift; her father suffered from dehydration several times while working in the field Bracero Program,
“My parents had been in a lot of work-related accidents and they had stories of people who didn’t survive,” Segura said. “That had a deep impact on me.”
When Segura was 13, the family was evicted from a rented house straddling the freeway so more construction could take place. At their next home, they were sprayed with the pesticide malathion.
She took these experiences with her to UC Santa Barbara, where she wanted to pursue a graduate degree in biology. But an elective course in environmental studies changed everything. It tied everything together: her family’s displacement, her exposure to pollution and pesticides, the undeniable connection between an organism’s health and its environment.
“It made sense to me. It made total sense,” she recalled. “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life, because this is the problem I’m trying to solve.”
She earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and later a master’s degree in public health from UCLA. The lessons of San Jose also stayed with her.
The house near Park Mesa Heights where Segura now lives with her husband (and their son, when he’s home from UC Berkeley) doesn’t have air conditioning, a lack she attributes to the thrift factor instilled in her by her mother.
When it gets hot, she opens the windows and closes the curtains. When it gets too hot, she either goes to a cooling centre in the city to see how people are doing, or goes to a mall, café or theatre.
Heat is a health issue, and it’s also an issue of equity. The ability to pay to control your environment – perhaps with air conditioning, or moving to a cooler coastal area – can make the difference between life and death.
“You could have two communities that are literally zip codes next to each other, and one would have three times more emergency room visits than the other because of the heat,” he said. Dr. David Eisenman“It’s in your face,” said Dr. Judith Orloff, director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters.
Our familiarity with heat is what makes it so deadly, Eisenman said.
He said people “think they can handle it.” “They’re actually not afraid of it. And it’s going to be a challenge for us to change the culture around this.”
It has always been hot in Los Angeles. The sun is a highlight for many people who live here.
But heat waves – extreme heat that lasts for days and doesn’t give the body a chance to recover – are dangerous. longer, hotter and more frequent Today it is higher than it was 50 or even 20 years ago, and it is estimated that it will be even higher by the middle of the century.
The hotter it is, the harder your body has to work to maintain an internal temperature of 98.6 degrees.
When the temperature rises, your heart beats faster. The capillaries beneath the surface of your skin widen to accommodate the extra blood flowing through them, and your skin turns pink and then red as it reaches below the surface.
Then you start sweating, the body trying to cool itself through evaporation. As you lose water, your blood pressure drops, a change that can make you feel dizzy, nauseated and confused. If you lose too much water, you become dehydrated, which makes these symptoms even worse.
The hotter it is, the harder your body has to work to maintain an internal temperature of 98.6 degrees.
By now your muscles cramp and get tired easily due to lack of water and electrolytes. This discomfort is a warning sign to hydrate and take shelter.
If you don’t willingly take breaks – or can’t – your body will take them for you. heat stroke The body temperature starts to rise to around 104. Due to the lack of necessary blood and oxygen, organs stop working. Even if you get help at this point – which would require someone to step in and help you, since you’re probably too confused to seek help on your own – the stress and inflammation would have already caused permanent damage to your cells.
“We talk a lot about prevention, because once you get to that point, for some people it’s a point of no return,” he said. Dr. Jan SchönbergerProfessor of Emergency Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and Chief of Service in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Los Angeles General Medical Center.
At an internal temperature of 107 degrees, the membranes around your cells disintegrate. Heatstroke can lead to mortality Up to 65%,
“When I teach this to medical students, I say: Think of the body as melting internally,” Schoenberger said.
In August, as a brutal heat wave was approaching, Segura put paper fans in the trunk of her car bearing the city’s 311 service line and tips for staying safe in the heat.
She was delivering them to organizations helping those most vulnerable to heat-related illnesses. This trip would let her see firsthand what resources they still needed.
His first stop was Community Refresh Spot On Skid Row, a rest stop that’s open 24 hours a day has phone chargers, showers, bathrooms and cooling fans. Segura spoke to the staff and then walked among the people waiting their turn to shower.
“We’re having a heat wave this weekend,” she said, handing a fan to a thin woman wearing striped leg warmers. She spoke to a man who was worried about leaving his cat alone in the heat. (Stephanie Campos of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles(One of the organizations that runs the site has come forward and said pets are welcome.)
Segura reminded people to drink water — it’s available for free at the center — and said they can cool off by drinking water at any of the city’s open libraries or community centers.
It was a lovely summer afternoon, one in which it was hard to imagine there was too much sunshine. Many of the people he spoke to were preoccupied with other concerns.
As she approached, a tall, well-built man stood up. She offered him a fan but he declined, saying he knew he couldn’t hold it and he didn’t want to make a mess. She asked how hot it would be in there, and he nodded politely when she told him the forecast called for a high temperature of 90 degrees.
After Segura left, he said several things were bothering him: housing, his mental health, the harm he faced on the streets. But not the temperature.
“This is California,” he said, pointing to the cloudless sky. “What will the weather be like here?”
Back in her car, Segura took a deep breath. It’s her habit to look for opportunities, to find a base of support for the next step. There was already a team of knowledgeable workers on site, she thought aloud — maybe she could find a way to get them more training on heat illnesses or raise money for a community health educator.
It may be too late for the coming heat wave. But the harsh reality is that there will undoubtedly be another summer.
“We have to work harder. Not a single moment should be wasted,” he said.
