PHOENIX — Mexican farm worker Avelino Vázquez Navarro had no air conditioning in the trailer where he died last month in Washington state as temperatures soared into triple digits.
For the past dozen years, the 61-year-old has spent much of the year working near Pasco, Washington, sending money to his wife and daughters in Mexico’s Pacific coast state of Nayarit and traveling back every Christmas.
Now, the family is raising money to bring his remains home.
“If this trailer had air conditioning and it was working, it probably would have helped,” said Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGary, who ruled Vazquez Navarro’s death was heat-related, with alcohol poisoning as a contributing cause.
Most heat-related deaths involve homeless people living outdoors. But those who die indoors without sufficient refrigeration are also vulnerable, typically over 60, living alone and with limited income.
Highlighting the inequalities around energy and access to air conditioning as summers get hottermany victims are Black, Indigenous or Latinolike Vázquez 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 accessibility issue.”
People who live in mobile homes or older trailers and trailers are more likely to not have adequate refrigeration. Nearly a quarter of indoor heat deaths in Arizona’s Maricopa County last year occurred in these types of homes, which are turned into a grilling mess by the scorching desert sun.
“Mobile homes can really get hot 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 particularly at risk in scorching Phoenix, where 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 Celsius) weather is forecast for this weekend.
“People are more exposed to the elements than in other housing,” said Patricia Solís, executive director of the Knowledge exchange for resilience at Arizona State University, who worked on mapping hot weather impacts on mobile home parks for a state preparedness plan.
Worse still, some parks prevent residents from making modifications that might cool their homes, citing aesthetic concerns. A new Arizona law required parks, for the first time this summer, to allow residents to install cooling methods such as windows, awnings and shutters.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, where Phoenix is located, 156 of 645 heat-related deaths last year it occurred in closed, non-refrigerated environments. In most cases, a unit was present but not working, without power or turned off, public health officials said.
One of the victims was Shirley Marie Kouplen, who died after being hit by high temperatures inside her Phoenix mobile home amid a fire. heat wave when the extension cord supplying electricity was disconnected.
First responders recorded the 70-year-old widow’s 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.
Kouplen was apparently struggling financially, if the poor condition of his 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’s unclear how the cable was disconnected, whether Kouplen had an electric bill or how he got power.
“Losing your air conditioning is now a life-threatening event,” said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who 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. And now it is.”
Arizona’s regulated utilities have been banned since 2022 from cutting power during the summer following the 2018 death of a 72-year-old woman 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 that “due to privacy concerns” the company could not say whether 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 October 15.
Cuts may occur after these dates if mounting debts are not paid.
Arizona is among 19 states with shutdown protections, leaving about half the U.S. population without safeguards against the loss of electricity during the summer, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association said in a statement. new study.
Nearly 20% of very low-income households do not have air conditioning, especially in places like Washington state, where they were not typically installed before climate-fueled heat waves became increasingly strong, frequent and long-lasting.
In the Pacific Northwest, several hundred people died during a 2021 heat wave, prompting Portland, Oregon, to launch a program provide portable refrigeration units to vulnerable and low-income people.
Chicago, best known for its cold winters, saw a heat wave kill 739 people, most of them elderly, over five days in 1995. Amid high humidity and temperatures above 37.7 C (100 F), most of the victims There was no air conditioning or no money to get by. in their units.
In 2022, Chicago adopted a cooling law after three women died in their apartments in a seniors building on an unseasonably warm spring day. Certain residential buildings must now have at least one air-conditioned common area for cooling when the heat index exceeds 80 F (26.6 C) and cooling is not available in individual units.
Nonprofits in historically hotter areas like Arizona are also trying to better address the inequities that low-income people face during sweltering summers. The Phoenix-based community agency Fires recently raised money to purchase more than $2 million in air conditioning equipment to help 150 families across the state over three years, said Executive Director Kelly McGowan.
Laws protect renters in some places. Phoenix homeowners should ensure that air conditioning units cool to 82 F (28 C) or lower and that evaporative coolers bring the temperature down to 86 F (30 C).
Palm Springs, California, and Las Vegas, both desert cities, have laws that require landlords to provide air conditioning in rental homes. Dallas, where temperatures can exceed 110 F (43.3 C) in the summer, has a similar law.
But most renters pay their own electricity costs, leaving them agonizing over whether they’ll even be able to turn on the cooling or how high to set the thermostat.
A new report estimates The average cost for U.S. families to cool off from June to September will grow 7.9% nationwide this year, from $661 in 2023 to $719 this summer.
Wolf noted the federal government Low Income Home Energy Assistance Programthat provides money to states to help families pay for heating and cooling is underfunded, with 80% going toward heating homes in the winter.
At Kouplen’s trailer park, Spanish-speaking neighbors had little interaction with “Señora Shirley,” who used a walker to take her two little dogs outside. Neighbors said the animals were adopted after her death.
Kouplen was buried in north Phoenix at Arizona National Memorial Cemetery, next to her husband, JD D. Kouplen, who died in 2020.
“Never Forgotten,” says the shared marker.
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