(film reel clattering) - Welcome to today's special news briefing on extreme heat, described as the number one climate killer.

Last week alone saw four consecutive days that were the hottest ever recorded on Earth.

This is the first of three statewide news briefings to track the onset of extreme heat in California and what key state and local agencies, as well as community-based organizations are doing to help people and localities adapt.

[background music] Today, we welcome speakers who will help us understand what is extreme heat and how the state is mobilizing extraordinary resources to protect its most vulnerable residents.

Now, we're gonna start with V. Kelly Turner who is associate director of Urban Environmental Research at UCLA, and she will give us a wider context for understanding extreme heat.

Professor Turner, please go ahead.

Welcome.

- Hi, thank you so much for having me today to speak with you all about this topic.

I'm associate director at the Luskin Center for Innovation, which is an environmental policy and planning research center at UCLA and we work a lot on bringing sort of the science of extreme heat to effective policy and planning.

And so, the first thing that I usually tell people when we're talking about heat is that there's really three buckets.

The first is extreme heat, which gets a lot of play.

This is heat waves, weather that's exceptional in some way.

And, we know that, that extreme heat's gonna get longer and worse in the future.

And then, that's made even worse by the way we build cities regionally.

We put a lot of buildings and impervious stuff out and that creates what's often called the "urban heat island" effect.

The urban heat island effect which makes whole cities hotter than places that are not developed sometimes.

But, on the other hand this third bucket is the human heat burden and that is the way that people experience heat as they live their daily lives.

And, I argue that this is the one that matters the most to the quality of life of Californians.

And, it's also the one that's most inequitable.

This is basically neighborhood to neighborhood.

What kind of infrastructure, green and gray, is available to people.

So, one of the most important things we can do to address extreme heat and inequity is to think more specifically about shade infrastructure.

And, that's because primarily the way that people feel hot is from exposure to the sun.

And so, you can reduce temperatures on the body by about 30 to 40 degrees Celsius as measured by a composite metric that we use in our lab, in just a few feet.

And, that's just by erecting a shade structure.

And so, we define shade structure as straight-- Excuse me!

We define shade infrastructure as all of the green and engineered sources of shade, including awnings, sails, and multi-story buildings, and the policies and planning tools needed to implement them effectively and equitably.

Because most Californians are effectively living in shade deserts currently, but the distribution of shade in the city is very inequitable.

So, I wanna highlight the example of Pacoima, where we recently did a shade audit in a neighborhood and a school.

And, we found that the school has, for instance, less than 10% shade in the midday hours.

And, that's when kids are out having recess, recreating, eating lunch.

And, this is not atypical.

This was a very typical California school.

So, what do we do about it?

Well, we need to be really specific about settings, like schools or residential or transportation, because different interventions are going to be needed in each setting.

So, in schools, play yards need less asphalt, and they need more shade to effectively address the heat issues that children are facing.

But, we also need to address regulations.

It can be really difficult, for instance, to just erect a shade structure in a school because the way construction is financed and regulated by the state.

And, if you're interested in this, you can take a look at-- we have a series of heat policy briefs at our center.

I believe the link will be sent out.

One on the housing sector and one on schools.

And, one of the things that we argue in our schools brief, for instance, is that we need to center equity.

The regulations and interventions are only as good as our ability to put equity front-and-center.

And, that's because even well-intended ideas can fall short if we do not.

For instance, grant-based programs for school greening may be very difficult to access if a school doesn't have the resources or the personnel to go after them.

I'm very excited that the interest in shade is shared by the state.

We were just awarded, along with our partners KDI, a planning grant, a climate adaptation planning grant, to create a shade equity master plan for the unincorporated areas of East Coachella Valley.

And, this is something that we hope that every community in the state of California will have is a shade audit.

And then, help them to make a plan to introduce this because it is such an effective way to address the issue that matters to people, especially low-income individuals who live and work a lot of times outdoors more so than folks that do not.

- Thank you so much, Professor Turner.

So, you talked a lot about shade and you said that you also have some thoughts about housing.

Can you advance some of those thoughts as well to us?

- Yes.

Yeah, happy to.

So, one of the things that is the most-- the biggest low-hanging fruit for the state right now is that it's perfectly legal to rent a home that is too hot.

So, while there are regulations that define what is a tenantable dwelling for cold weather, there's not for hot weather.

And, that's just not commensurate with the reality right now that California keeps getting hotter and hotter.

So, you know, this is one thing that can be done at the state level.

It can also be done at the city level.

But, one thing that we found-- we were out in East Coachella Valley and we compared Palm Springs, which has a threshold.

They're one of those cities that has passed a threshold, a maximum temperature threshold for tenants.

And then, we did some measurements in mobile dwellings in the city of Oasis, or the community of Oasis.

And, what we found is that if those mobile homes had air conditioning, they sometimes got hotter than the Palm Springs standards, still.

But, those that didn't were above the Palm Springs standards all day long and sometimes hotter than the air temperature outside.

So, this is an interesting case because it highlights both that there need to be standards and they need to be equitable.

I mean, this is just across the highway from each other, these two communities.

But, it also highlights that there are housing forms that are more precarious and that we can do certain things with housing, augmenting building codes for housing.

That's new construction or retrofits.

And then, there's another set of regulations that need to be addressed for renters.

And then, there's yet another for mobile home dwellers, and the unhoused.

40% of deaths during extreme heat events are the unhoused community.

And so, really looking across the different housing types will be important as we move forward.

- We're gonna go ahead and invite Dr. Lucia Abascal.

She will give an overview of how the state is mobilizing its resources to combat extreme heat.

Please go ahead, Dr. Abascal.

Welcome.

- Yes.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you again.

Last time we were talking about another public health emergency, COVID-19.

And now, we're talking about, not a new one but another important one as well, which sadly we don't have a vaccine for, but we do have some measures.

The issue is that not everybody can adhere to them in the same capacity as we were just hearing.

So, I just want to start by telling you just a story.

I was-- I mostly-?

I'm in Mexico right now because that's where I'm from, but I mostly live in San Francisco.

And so, I cannot complain about the heat there!

But, I was talking with a woman, a woman that works with me on a research project, and she lives in the Coachella Valley.

And, I was asking her, can you please tell me about your experience?

She's from the P'urhépecha community, which is an indigenous community from Michoacán, Mexico and they've been living in the Coachella Valley for a long time.

And, they mainly work in agriculture.

And, she said, "yes, that's a very, very big problem."

First, because I mean, we have the immediate effects, right?

A lot of the people that work in agriculture in the Coachella Valley live in really old trailers that are even from 1920.

They don't have air conditioning and they don't have the capacity to install air conditioning.

So, they-- when they-- she was telling me that they've reached even 125.

And, that the trailers?

You get even hotter.

So, there's no safe place for them to go.

And, once they are outside, there's no shade.

So, that's a very big issue that's impacting their communities.

And, I mean, many communities like her.

But, she was also talking about the consequences that might not-- cause, like, heat stroke, for example.

She was telling me that the-- one of the big cooling sites they have in Coachella Valley, Salton Sea was starting to dry, and that was causing that some chemicals in the bottom were raising.

And now, that her house smells like sulfur.

So, just a lot of consequences, even in these places that are used to heat and they've always experienced heat.

What we are seeing, what we expect to see going forward, is even a couple of degrees that can make things way harder.

We know that heat is a main killer.

Of all the disasters, of all the natural disasters, heat is a main killer.

Just I was reading the other day in the New York Times that just last year 60,000 people died in Europe because of extreme heat.

Right?

And, we'll start seeing those numbers in the U.S., in California, and we at the state really want everybody to be prepared.

And, I wish we could do something.

And, we can.

I mean, but it will take longer to change the course of things.

But, right now it's very, very important for everybody to understand the dangers of heat.

And, that's why one of the main things we are doing is these sort of activities to inform the public about the dangers of heat.

Right?

So, what are important things to consider when thinking about heat?

We like to focus especially on three.

So, first: stay cold.

I mean-- sorry!

Stay cool.

Stay cool.

If you can stay inside in places that have AC, if you're fortunate to have it in your house, try to turn it on.

If not, local libraries, malls, and other places where you can get AC are good places to go.

You can find in the website Pilar shared with us.

There's a list where you can find cooling places by each county and there you can direct people in your own counties to go to them.

Then, the next one is to stay hydrated.

Very important to make sure everybody, especially high risk populations: small children, pregnant women, elderly people, and people that might have a disability.

It's very important to make sure everybody's hydrated.

Even though they are at risk, we know that even somebody that's healthy can suffer from heat stroke, okay?

So, everybody-- this goes to everybody.

Stay cool; stay hydrated.

And, lastly, check in on each other.

If you have an elder relative that might live alone, if you know somebody that's working on the fields, if you know somebody that has small children, let's make sure that we take care of each other.

So, those are the three main things we want everybody to know.

And then, lastly, what is the state doing?

So, first, we want to raise awareness.

And then, there's different plans to increase cooling spaces.

And, I mean that's in the short term, but also in the long term, to also try to have more trees in cities, build more shades, as we were hearing Professor V. Kelly tell us.

And, those initiatives, there's a very big investment of millions and millions of dollars that the state is giving because extreme weather is one of the priorities from the California Department of Public Health and from the governor's office.

And, yeah.

Happy to take any questions.

- Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Abascal.

Can you talk a little bit about what Cal/OSHA is doing to protect workers, farmworkers and indoor workers?

- Yes, yes.

That's an excellent question.

And, thank you for bringing it up.

It was-- I forgot to mention it!

But, we have to remember that workers have rights and within those rights are the rights to take a break and also to stay hydrated and take drinks.

There are going to be regular-?

OSHA workers are going to be visiting some working sites to make sure that the employers are adhering to the rights of employees.

So, that's a big effort we are doing.

And, also helping employers come up with plans and know the regulations and the rights of their employees.

So, especially by providing, if people work outside, just monitoring the weather, providing shade, cooling spaces, hydration; make sure they're working the right amount of hours, make sure that they're capacitated to know, and their workers to know the signs and symptoms of heat stroke, which can include dizziness, leg cramps, feeling kind of, like, out-of-yourself.

And then, what to do if that happens to any employee.

So, those are some of the things that OSHA is working with employees to have in place.

- Also, the previous speaker alluded to inequities and we do know those exist.

Can you talk a little bit about who are the most vulnerable populations to-- for the heat situation?

- Yeah!

So, I think we can talk of vulnerability, two ways.

So, we have people that are physically vulnerable to the heat, even though everybody is.

We have small children, elderly people, people with disabilities.

So, those are the people that their body might have a bigger-?

A harder time regulating the body, right?

Because when we are very hot, our body goes into overtime trying to cool it off.

And then, the issue really starts when our internal organs start warming up.

So, that happens to everybody.

But the healthier we are, and not-- either young children or elders, it's easier.

Also, pregnant women have to work double.

So, that also makes it harder for them.

But then, we also have people that because of their living conditions, because their social determinants of health, cannot take all the precautions they have.

So, who are they?

People that work in agriculture, people that work outside, farmworkers.

They have a higher risk of being exposed to the heat.

Also, people that don't have cooling in their homes or don't have access, for example, to public parks that might be shaded.

We know that there's a correlation between the heat people are experiencing and how their living environment looks like.

So, those are people that are also-- Also, people that have no access to health care.

People that might live far away and might not reach a health provider in time when they are suffering.

So, all of the things we know that put people at higher risk also affect during heat strokes.

- I'm gonna welcome now, Sandra Young.

Sandy, welcome.

- Thank you very much.

And, yes.

I speak with my two hats that I've worn for 30 years!

My primary care provider to an overwhelmingly farmworker, indigenous population in Ventura County.

And then, also, as a equally long-term advocate and supporter for the... MICOP, as you call it, Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, which is an extremely important organization in advocating for the rights of farmworkers and particularly indigenous farmworker families.

So, um?

Just a few points that others have not mentioned yet.

I would say that in Ventura County, which is clearly less heat challenged than Coachella Valley but we have always seen heat-related injuries, heat-related illness in primary care, in the headaches and fatigue and rashes and dizziness, and fever that people come to see us with.

It's important as providers that we are able to recognize those symptoms as often being tied to heat exposure.

And, I think we don't do that good a job at recognizing those connections many times.

So, even though Oxnard is cooler than Coachella Valley if you picture a strawberry field, which is completely open where workers are covered head-to-toe in clothing, bandanas, to protect from dust and toxic chemicals.

And then, on top of that, you are in a situation where in part of the year, people's wages are tied to the quantity of fruit that they pick.

So, that you will literally see workers running with their heavy baskets of fruit to the trucks so that they can hopefully make that little bit of extra money that allows their family to pay the rent and eat, given the low level of farmworker wages.

Similarly to the open strawberry fields, picture the-- what they call the "high tunnels," the tarps, basically, under which crops like raspberries and tomatoes are grown, where this is a huge enclosed tent which traps the heat which traps the chemicals.

Someone from the Mixteco Project was just telling me that in the mornings when it's hot, you can see the fumigants rising out of these tents shortly before people have to go to work in them.

So, these are chronic conditions that are only going to be getting worse.

Another problem that I wanna raise is that while there are standards, important standards at least in California, regarding water, heat and breaks, that these are largely ignored in the fields.

The Mixteco Project recently did a caravan tour and out of 12 sites that they looked at, only three had adequate water available.

Water's often far away from where people are picking.

So, that even to go and get water, you're going to be raising your body temperature even more.

In addition, while I think it's very-- The education component of educating people around excessive heat exposure is extremely important that we need to remember that there are-- the majority of farmworkers in California are undocumented.

This means that they are very often not in a position to complain, to insist on their rights, to insist on their breaks, for fear of being fired, for fear of losing that tenuous hold on existence that they currently have.

So, you know, I work with the Mixteco Project with Radio Indigena, very important resource for the indigenous community.

They are already partnering with Heat Ready California.

There are already Instagram posts and translation in Mixteco language to bring this message to people.

But, I would argue that more than education is required because of the enforcement factor.

And that, to me, a way forward is to mandate that every field with more than eight workers have an elected worker representative who is empowered to monitor the health and safety standards in that field, and to work with OSHA.

OSHA's a very important agency, but their resources are very limited.

And, when growers know that OSHA is coming to town they have a quick cleanup, oftentimes.

And so, there needs to be an on-the-spot immediacy to the ability of farmworkers to insist on the proper standards for heat exposure.

And so, that's the work that I'm still doing.

I think our healthcare system has a long way to go to meet-- be advocates for the farmworker community, to insist the pregnant women who are at very increased risk of fetal complications, miscarriage, and heat stroke are assisted with state disability, and understand that the-- our healthcare system needs to be an advocate for our communities, and not simply a passive provider of medical care.

So, I'll leave it at that and let discussion continue.

- Just the other day I was on Facebook and a person I know posted something about it being a lie that the Arctic Circle is getting warmer!

Yeah.

With vaccines, we have disinformation.

Are we having this as a problem here, too?

- I mean, I can add a little bit.

I've done some work on the misinformation aspect and, I mean, I started that work with COVID vaccines.

And now, I've just moved into misinformation period because it's such a big thing, right?

And, the crazy thing with weather is that we are experiencing weather right now!

It's not like-?

Yeah, the Arctic.

That's easier to dismiss, but you cannot be in the middle of a heat wave and dismiss a heat wave.

So, I think there's, like, this complete disconnect of how the weather is connected and how our actions here where we are affect others.

And, I think that's the thing that's very disconnected and why communications, as Marta was saying, is so important.

[background music] And, just try to find a way where-- how people can understand how weather is connected and how what is happening in the Arctic affects what happens in California and the coral reefs in Florida, right?

How everything is connected.

And at the end, we are experiencing the effects of all of this warming.

And, I mean, heat stroke is one of the fastest, and, like, fastest consequences of extreme weather, right?

Because like, it happens like that.

But, we are also going to start, I mean-- Water!

Now, if people cannot access water, if we can't access food?

And, it just goes, like, downhill from there.

So, of course, that information is very, very important.

- Well?

Thank you, everyone.

This was an amazing discussion, really great.

And, we appreciate you for being here today.

I hope our media take this message to their audiences.

Thank you so much.

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