Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Chicago When It Sizzles

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

July 1995: A deadly heatwave gripped Chicago - bridges buckled; the power grids failed; and the morgue ran out of space - but some neighbourhoods saw more deaths than others. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg wanted to know why. So he headed to the hardest hit districts and found that social isolation and loneliness played an unsettling role in their heavy deaths tolls.    Does the Chicago heatwave teach us that in dealing with climate change we need to consider not just physical infrastructure, but social infrastructure too?   Eric Klinenberg's classic text on the topic is called Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. For a full list of other sources go to timharford.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. Pushkin. Hello everyone, just popping up before we start to note the debt this episode owes to Eric Cleenanberg's book, Heat Wave, which you'll hear cited several times. It's the definitive account of the disaster we describe, and I couldn't have written this episode without it. Cleenanberg helped reframe what a natural disaster actually is, and I've drawn extensively on his reporting and his thesis. A revised edition of Heat Wave was published just a few years ago, I suggest you pick up

a copy. At half past three on a Wednesday afternoon, the 12th of July 1995. Chicago's branch of the National Weather Service issued an advisory. It was going to get hot. No kidding. It's Chicago. In July. As a local TV weatherman put it, we saw the heat coming for some time, but you almost ridiculed when you'd say,

hey, it's really going to get hot! But it was really going to get hot. The temperature had already hit 97 degrees. The next day, the first day, was worse. At midway airport, it was 106 degrees, and it was humid like being wrapped in hot towels. It felt like 125 degrees. To have a temperature of 104 and a dew point in the low 80s and not pop a thunderstorm was pretty extraordinary, said the weatherman, a thunderstorms function in nature is to be the air conditioner. Nature's air conditioners weren't working that week. There was no thunderstorm, nor was there a cooling breeze from Lake Michigan to the north

and east. Instead, hot, wet air was slowly oozing over Chicago from the southwest. Stores sold out of air conditioners. This is the kind of weather we pray for, said one appliance manufacturer. The lucky folk who did have air conditioners turned them up to the max. Those who didn't, went to the beach,

or a municipal pool. People took boat trips out onto the lake. Trips which were abandoned because passengers were becoming dehydrated and ill. As neighbourhood streets baked like ovens, some people set up sprinklers, others illegally opened fire hydrants to provide a little relief and a little joy. Less joyfully, pelted workmen with rocks and bricks when they tried to shut them off. The pressure in Chicago's water mains

started to fall. The next day, Friday, was still over 100 degrees and the stress on the city was growing. Cars were breaking down, roads buckling. City crews were hosing down lifting bridges across the Chicago River to prevent them jamming as the metal expanded. But the mayor, Richard Dele, tried to reassure people. ''Let's not blow it out of proportion,'' he said. ''It's very, very, very hot.'' ''Tas the tad out there, that's where we all walk.''

But then he added, ''It was just one of those crazy weather days, like a winter blizzard. Yes, we go to extremes in Chicago, and that's whyizzard. Yes, we go to extremes in Chicago and that's why people love Chicago. We go to extremes. But it wasn't like a winter blizzard, which Chicago could fix by sending out the snow plows. The heat wave was subtler, more surprising, more deadly. Even for a city of extremes, there are limits to what can be endured. The heat wave was about to push Chicago through those limits. I'm Tim Haafard, and you're listening to Corsionary Tales. On Friday afternoon, it was hot everywhere, but few places were hotter than the inside of Transmission Substation 114 on Addison Street in Northwest Chicago.

TSS 114 was a set of large transformers, 20 feet high, 15 feet across, which stepped high voltage electricity down to domestic voltages. TSS-114 was hot because the transformers were operating well above their design capacity, which means they were throwing off heat. The temperature outside was well over 100 degrees. The temperature inside the substation didn't bear thinking about. At 4.56pm, a safety device overheated and shut down one of a set of four transformers, the other three began to work even harder. At 5.47pm, a different safety device simply caught fire at a second transformer fails. The third and fourth transformers didn't last long. 49,000 customers lost electricity the next 24 hours. And TSS 114 was merely the most serious of more than 1,300 electrical

equipment failures during the heat wave. The power loss took out the air conditioning of course, but it also took out the elevators in high rises, often the hottest buildings and often a place where elderly people would live, and it took out the lights, both inside and outside. The whole area was dark, recalled the TV weatherman. People were walking around with flashlights, after having down Addison Street for I don't know how many decades, I didn't recognize it. On Friday evening, as utility workers scrambled in vain to stop the lights going out, Edmund Donahue, the chief medical examiner for the Chicago area, Cook County, received a phone call from his office.

area, Cook the County, received a phone call from his office. Don't sedone a Hugh. We just wanted to inform you that there are 40 autopsy cases on the list for tomorrow. 40 cases? I can't ever remember 40 cases why. I think they're dying of the heat, sir. When Donahue arrived at the morgue the next morning, there were a hundred, and the bodies kept coming. Late that morning, city health officials declared a heat emergency. Every ambulance and every paramedic in the city was called in to work. It wasn't enough. At hospitals across the city, overwhelmed emergency rooms began to turn people away.

What gave the Chicago heat wave the potential to be so deadly was the combination of heat and humidity. This is measured by something called a wet bulb thermometer. A wet bulb thermometer is wrapped in damp cloth, which ordinarily would cool down the thermometer a lot as the water evaporates. But in humid conditions, the water evaporates slowly, and the bulb isn't cooled much. The human body is cooled by the evaporation of sweat from the skin, so the wet bulb thermometer provides a direct measure of how well the body's cooling system can work. At a wet bulb temperature of 95 degrees, sweating simply cannot cool your skin below 95 degrees. Your body's core temperature rises, your liver fails, your muscles and other organs quickly deteriorate. Such conditions will kill pretty much anyone within hours. Even at a wet bulb temperature of

80 degrees, sweating will barely keep your core temperature stable if you're physically active. It hit 85 degrees during the heat wave. That was a serious risk for any frail or elderly person who lacked air conditioning. By Saturday evening, there were 269 bodies at the Cook County Morg. That was more than the Morg's refrigerators could hold. What would they do with the corpses? One of the secretaries at the morgue remembered a role playing exercise they'd once done, imagining mass casualties as Chicago was hit by a nerve gas attack. Well, they didn't have the nerve gas, but they did have the mass casualties.

During that exercise, someone had said he'd be able to provide refrigerated trucks if the morgues' cold storage was overwhelmed. The secretary found that guy's number and made the call. Before long, a couple of refrigerated trucks rolled up in the parking lot, courtesy of a local meatpacking firm. It was a bad look, but what choice did they have? Exhausted staff began to carry the bodies through the baking heat of the parking lot and out into the cold meat trucks. But the dead were still coming in, carried by ambulances and police cars. Ed Donnie

Hughes' team realised they were going to need more of those trucks. Mayor Daly had said that people love Chicago because we go to extremes. Now Chicago's hospitals were being tested to the extreme, so was the water system drained of pressure by the sprinklers and the hydrants. So was its electricity supply pressed beyond the limit as every air conditioning unit in the city was cranked up. Pauline Jankovitz was being tested to the extreme too. Pauline's malfunctioning air conditioner wasn't much use, and her apartment was turning into a sauna. She wasn't too tempted to go outside, however. Pauline's neighborhood scared her.

She said, ''She's just a shooting gallery. I'm a moving target because I walk so slowly.'' Pauline lived up on the third floor, by choice. If I were on the first floor, I'd be even more vulnerable to a break in. Pauline, who was in her eighties, suffered from both a weak bladder and a weak leg. Straying far from the toilet felt risky and embarrassing. She had to walk with a crutch, and as she said, she couldn't move fast. The simple act of getting down several flights of stairs to street level, and then back up again, was an ordeal she didn't do it often. But Pauline wasn't completely isolated.

She had friends she could call any time she wanted to talk. As the temperature rose, Pauline spoke to one of those friends who urged her to get out of the steam room atmosphere of her apartment if it got too hot. On what proved to be the hottest day of the year, Pauline resolved to do just what her friend had said. She rose early and slowly, quietly, limped down the stairs. The sheer effort was exhausting. She was tempted to turn around and head back to the apartment,

but she gathered herself and stepped out onto the street. She waited for a city bus which took her to a local store. It was an oasis, fully air conditioned. Pauline took her time, leaning against her shopping cart, revitalized by the cool air. She bought some cherries, her favourite treat. Then, having built her strength, she slowly walked back to the bus stop and rode the bus until she got back to her apartment building. It was almost impossible to get back up the stairs. Her age, her weak leg, and above all the heat, made those few flights an almost insuperable obstacle. an almost insuperable obstacle. Back in the steaming apartment, there was no escape from the heat.

Sweat beaded on her skin, but did not evaporate. The air conditioning unit sputtered in effectually. Pauline called her friend again. She was getting dizzy, she said. She could see her hands were swelling up. It felt numb, and that sensation was spreading. Her friend kept talking to her. Then Pauline said, I'm just going to dunk my head in some water. Maybe get some wet towels. Just stay on the line for me. Pauline's friend waited and

listened down the phone line. She could hear the water running. Then she could hear Pauline's friend waited and listened down the phone line. She could hear the water running. Then she could hear Pauline shuffling slowly around the apartment. Was that the word of a fan? She waited. And waited. The fan kept worrying. There was no longer any sound from Pauline. Corsary tales will return after the break. As the bodies began to pile up at the Cook County morgue, the chief medical examiner, Edmund Donahue, started to raise the alarm. The heat wave was much more than an inconvenience. It was killing people, hundreds of people.

With ambulances overwhelmed, hospitals turning people away, and the elderly far more vulnerable than the young, it was an eerie glimpse of more recent health crises. And so of course, the political heat was rising too. Politicians complained that when medics such as Edmund Donahue wrongly attributed natural deaths to the heatwave, they were playing politics and exaggerating the crisis. Mayor Daly protested, you cannot claim that everybody who's died in the last eight or nine days dies of heat, then everybody in the summer that dies will die of heat. But Donahue wasn't claiming that everyone who showed up at the Cook County morgue had died

of heat, just that a large number of them had. Otherwise, why had the death rates spiked so dramatically? Why were there now nine, count them, nine huge meat trucks lined up in the morgue's parking lot, each full of bodies? And despite the haunting sight of those trucks, there were also grumbles that the whole thing was a media concoction. Did people die of the heat or just in the heat?

And some commentators observed those who had died, generally elderly, and also often black and poor, would have died soon anyway. For near-legendary local colonist Mike Royco wrote a piece titled, Killer Heat Wave, or a media event. Royco argued that Chicago had always had heat waves. What was special about this one? He wrote, when poor Gramps croaked in those days, nobody got to see him being wheeled

into the morgue on the 10 o'clock news. He added, old people inevitably die of one thing or another. For some of them, the weather just speeds up the process. In other words, it's perfectly natural for old people to die. And the media were making a fuss about nothing.

Sound familiar? And yet, while Roy Co's argument has the ring of plausibility about it, he's turned the truth on its head, hasn't he? The media yawn at heatwaves. They're much more interested in tornadoes, or volcanoes, or terrorist attacks, something that looks good on film. Just imagine that a plane had crashed at O'Hare Airport, killing a couple of hundred people. It would have been a huge news event. The reporters and the cameras would have rushed to the scene immediately. Veterans at the Cook County Morgh didn't need to imagine that scenario.

They could remember it. Sixteen years earlier, a passenger jet had crashed at O'Hare and 273 people had died. To the morgue workers, the situation they faced in the heatwave wasn't much different. 273 victims of the plane crash, 269 corpses at the morgue by Saturday night. And for the Cook County morgue, things got worse, because people kept coming in for day after day after day. Eventually the heat would kill nearly three times as many people as the plane crash. It was as though an airliner had crashed on the Friday. The more workers and the emergency services had worked heroically for 24 hours, and then

the call came in. There's been another crash. Expect another two or three hundred casualties. And a day or so later, he won't believe it. But there's been a third catastrophe at O'Hare. A triple plane crash with more than 700 fatalities would have been almost unthinkable. Can you imagine the headlines? Eventually, journalists started to catch on to the heatwave. And TV helicopters flew over the Cook County Morg's parking lot, capturing that ghoulish footage of the line of refrigerated trucks.

But other disasters of the same era received far more coverage. For example, the Loma Prieta earthquake, which in 1989 killed 69 people in San Francisco and Oakland. 69 deaths is a disaster, of course. But the eventual death toll in Chicago was 739. After trying to blame Dr. Donahue, city authorities tried a different tack. Blame the victims. The problem, said one city official, was that people didn't look after themselves, and didn't accept help. We did everything possible, he said, but some people didn't want to open their doors

to us. That was a clever attempt to imply that city workers were knocking on the door of every vulnerable person. They weren't. Researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later concluded that the city government didn't deploy enough street-level workers. Still, the victim blaming excuse touches on an important truth. A lot of people didn't want to open their doors, whether to city workers or to their neighbours. One survivor, an elderly resident named Bob Greblow, explained, I'll talk through the door because you never know. You never know. At the Friday peak of the heat wave, the local news channel had led its evening broadcast

with a warning. Not of the deadly heat, but that opening your window might allow thieves to break into your apartment. Bob wouldn't go out either. That was risking both himself and the apartment he left behind. Young people are on the streets when I go to the currency exchange to get my check. There's robberies every day. It's too dangerous out there. Even during the day, that's when they get you, you know, when you go get your money. It's scary, but you

got to do it. What else are you going to do? Anyway, I don't bother other people, and I don't want to be bothered by other people. That's just my way. I've no where that I want to go. Easy for city officials to complain that people wouldn't open their doors. But people like Bob had good reason to fear the outside world. As the great urban observer, Jane Jacobs, told the Chicago sometimes back then, it took a lot of effort to make people this isolated. Of course, not everyone was isolated. Chicago's a buzzing city. Here are long time residents singing its praises.

People stay here because they like walking to the stores. They can get their food here. They can go to the bakery. Kids are out, old people are out, people are shopping. There's really no need to get in the car and go anywhere. You can certainly do things within walking distance and people do. This bustling city was full of air conditioned spaces. Many of them, such as libraries and shops, opened to anyone, free of charge. They could and did make space for the frail and the elderly to take shelter from the heat. So why didn't vulnerable people just stroll to the local store and hang out there where it was cool?

Bob Grebleau could tell you, it's too dangerous out there. I've know where I want to go. In the years after the heatwave, a young sociologist named Eric Klininnenberg spent time with vulnerable people in Chicago communities, examined the statistics on the death toll, and interviewed people with a wide variety of perspectives. His book, Heat Wave, is the definitive account of what went wrong under the surface of the catastrophe. The most striking thing Klinenberg did was to contrast two adjacent Chicago neighborhoods, South Laundale and North Laundale. On paper both neighborhoods had looked vulnerable with lots of impoverished elderly people living alone. Both were mostly

non-white, another possible indicator of vulnerability. And yet North Laundale had a heat wave death rate 10 times higher than South Laundale. We go to extremes, the mayor had said, and this difference truly was extreme. So why had South Laundale so similar on paper been largely spared when North Laundale had suffered so badly? But talking to local people about their lives, the explanation was clear. North Laundale, where Bob Greblow lived, was depopulated. It was an urban desert, pockmarked with vacant lots. Gangs used it as a convenient place to sell drugs. One resident had remembered his neighbours hanging out on sweltering

nights in the 1950s. We used to sit outside all night and just talk. But that wasn't possible in 1995, not with bullets flying. Big employers such as International Harvester, Sears Robuck and Western Electric had moved away and shops had closed. The streets of North Laundale felt deserted. Elderly people were afraid of being robbed when they went out and afraid that their homes would be ransacked in their absence. They weren't used to walking to local shops and there weren't many local shops to walk to. South Laundale was equally poor but it was overcrowded rather than deserted. As a result it felt bustling and safe.

You could step outside your door any time, and there would be folk around. Those happy Chicago residents we heard from a couple of minutes ago, walking around, visiting the bakery, they lived in South Laundale. South Laundale resident Frank Cruck spent his whole life there. I'm not afraid of my neighborhood, said Frank, we walk in the streets in the middle of the night when we come home. He sounds so different to Bob or Pauline, doesn't he? When the heat wave struck, of course, Frank and the other old-timers were happy to walk

into an air-conditioned store nearby and hang out. They felt safe leaving an empty apartment behind. When at home, they felt safe opening their doors to the people who came to check on them. In a heatwave, lively streets save lives. When the great Jane Jacobs summarized Eric Klinenberg's findings, she highlighted something so mundane that it's easy to overlook. In each neighborhood, when the crisis struck,

people kept behaving as they had before. North Laundale didn't have a functioning community, South Laundale did. When the crisis came, that meant that 10 times as many people died in desolate North Laundale, then they did in the bustling neighborhood to the south. Corsion retails will return in a moment. The first of the first of the first of the first of the first of the first of the first of the first of the first of the

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Male, age 79, black. Victim did not respond to phone calls or knocks on Victim's door since Sunday 16th July, 95. Victim was known as Quiet, to himself, and at times not to answer the door. What was that 79-year-old thinking before he passed out in the heat? Did he think of the outside world like Bob Greblo did? If someone comes to the door, I won't open it. I'll talk through the door because you never know. Did he fondly remember the 1950s when people could hang out with their neighbours? We used to sit outside all night and just talk.

We can only guess. Like many of the 739 people who died, he was voiceless and alone. The police report continues. Landlord does not have any information to any relatives to victim. Chain was on-door. Responding officer was able to see victim on sofa with flies on victim, and a very strong odor of decay and decomposing. Responding officer cuts chain,

per permission of landlord, called medical examineriner who authorized removal. No known relatives at this time. Remember what Jane Jacobs had said. It took a lot of effort to make people this isolated. As the heat wave hit, it was easy to see the physical infrastructure failing. The power cuts, the cracking roads, the trickling water mains, and the buckling bridges. But the physical infrastructure was straining all over the city.

It doesn't explain the difference between people like the nameless 79-year-old, far from neighborhood stores too frightened to open the door, and people such as Frank Crook, who had neighbours checking in on them, and who thought nothing of struggling out to cool down in a local grocery store. Remember that the death rate in North Laundale was 10 times as high as the death rate in South Laundale. The North Laundale residents who died weren't killed by a failure of physical infrastructure around them, but by a failure of the social infrastructure. That's much harder

to see, to measure, or to fix. But the failure was all around them, constraining every single day of their lives. Heat continues to be a killer. The World Health Organization estimates that between 1998 and 2017, 166,000 people died owing to heatwaves. Yet they rarely get the attention that we would devote to a volcano, a tsunami or a wildfire. And because the global climate is changing extreme heatwaves are becoming much more common. Events that we might expect once in 50,000 years, we might now see every decade or so. So we're going to have to get used to scorching temperatures

and smothering humidity. And that makes it all the more important to understand what happened in Chicago a quarter of a century ago. We can't prevent heatwaves, but there's a lot we can do to make them less dangerous. The physical shape of neighborhoods can make them heatwave prone or heatwave resistant. A city block with tarmac and concrete, little shade and rapid drainage of water can be several degrees hotter than one with a shade of trees or patches of vegetation that catch water and let it evaporate. Leafy neighborhoods tend to be a great deal cooler, and it will surprise nobody to hear that leafy neighborhoods also tend to be richer. A recent study in the journal Climate found that historically redlined areas in US cities are an average of 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. These areas are mostly African-American. Denied federal mortgage

support in the 1930s and long marginalised afterwards. North Laundale is one of them. But while this is all so depressing, doesn't it also offer some hope? When we think about adapting to climate change, we often think of expensive defenses such as dikes and flood barriers, or waterproofing power and transport infrastructure so that it copes better with extreme conditions. For some places that's a cost we're going to have to swallow. But the experience of Chicago suggests that there's another kind of adaptation, another kind of weatherproofing, supporting vibrant neighbourhoods, planting trees and laying out parks, reducing crime and encouraging local businesses, funding libraries and community centres. I'm not saying it's easy to turn a failing neighbourhood into a thriving one,

but I am saying that it's the kind of thing we'd want to do anyway. The flourishing community of South Laundale protected its vulnerable residents in a way that the Threadbare community of North Laundale just couldn't. But that wasn't some expensive precaution that paid off only in a crisis. It was a natural consequence of the way South Laundale worked every hour of every day, making it a far happier, healthier, safer place to live. Pauline Jankovitz, remember, was isolated and afraid. But she had a friend she could call. When we left Pauline, she'd gone quiet.

Her friend was on the other end of the telephone, waiting, increasingly anxious. At last, Pauline came back on the line. She was okay. Pauline had been dipping her head in water, then brought wet towels back to the bed. She turned on her fan and laid down under the towels with the fan blowing over her. She lost track of time a bit, then remembered that her friend was still on the line. Thanks for waiting for me. I feel a lot better now. I'm going to keep using the towels and the fan, it's working. And it was working.

Pauline hung up, laid down again and waited to regain her strength. Looking back, she laughed about it. She told the sociologist, Eric Klinenberg, I have a special way to beat the heat. I like to go on a Caribbean cruise. I get several washcloths and dip them in cold water. I place them over my eyes so that I can't see. I lie down and set the fan directly on me. The wet

towels and the wind from the fan give a cool breeze, and I imagine myself on a cruise around the islands. Even in the humidity, the towels and the fan help. But so do the friends. My friends know about my cruises too, so when they call me on hot days they all say, hi Pauline, how was your trip? We laugh about it, but it keeps me alive. But what if the virtual cruise hadn't worked? What if Pauline had passed out? Her friend was still on the line, she'd have hadn't worked. What if Pauline had passed out? Her friend was still on the line.

She'd have called the ambulance. Don't just knock on the door, she'd have said, break it down. I know she's in there. I was talking to her when she stopped responding. Pauline was vulnerable, and she was isolated. But she had someone looking out for her. Someone she could trust. Everybody should.

But in Chicago, not everybody did. The last 41 victims of the Chicago Heat Wave were buried six weeks later in a mass grave, a 160 feet long. There was so alone that even after death, nobody came to claim them. 41 simple pine boxes were laid side by side and the six foot deep trench, each had a brass tag with a number. County investigators had tried to track down the families of each victim for them to arrange a funeral.

Often they had succeeded. These 41 were the ones who were left. Edward Hoffman, Leonard Heimer, Lisa Kimberley, Paul Osientchovich, Lydia Payne, Thomas Randall, William Readsville, Robert Yankavitch, Ethel Young. Sometimes no family member could be found. Sometimes the family didn't want to get involved. A few people had shown up to bear witness during the brief service. Some were solemn, some angry, some

were simply sobbing. If any of these living knew any of the dead, they did not admit it. Eric Cledenberg's book is Heatwave. C. Tim Harford.com Corsinary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilly with support from Courtney Garino and Emily Vaughn. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Weiss. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Haafard and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Mia LeBel. Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John Schnarrs, Julia Barton, Carly McGleory, Eric Sandler, Royston Besserv, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Marano, Daniel LaCarn,

and Maya Caning. Corsairry Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review. Tell a friend, tell two friends, and if you want to hear the show ads-free and listen to four exclusive cautionary tales shorts, then sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm-plus. you