Informed Comment: “We all just evaporate:” Extreme Heat Overwhelms Phoenix’s Unhoused Community

( Cronkite News ) – PHOENIX – Near the intersection of S. 11th Avenue and W. Jefferson Street in Phoenix, the heat is intense. For those who live along the street in tents and makeshift shelters, this heat can become fatal.

“My friend … in the street over here, from heat exhaustion.… He couldn’t breathe no more, because it got so hot,” said William Taft Cowan Jr., an unhoused resident of The Zone, a homeless encampment in Phoenix.

“Still young, you know?”

In addition to witnessing the death of his friend, Taft Cowan has felt the effects of the heat on his own health.

“The other day I had a seizure from it getting so hot…. I fell down and busted my finger over here. And it burned in my hands when I hit the concrete, burnt my knees too – it’s so hot, it’s like a frying pan.”

Phoenix posted 55 days of temperatures over 110 degrees Fahrenheit this summer, breaking previous records. And there are more hot days in Phoenix’s future. By 2050, according to Climate Check, Phoenix will, on average, have 44 days a year over 109.9 degrees, up from an average of seven such days a year between 1985 and 2005.

Even when extreme heat doesn’t kill, it harms.

Dr. Pope Moseley, a physician at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions, focuses his research on heat’s effect on human health. According to Moseley, heat redirects the flow of blood in the body.