How to Survive a Heat Wave

The 1995 heat wave that killed an estimated 739 people in Chicago was a terrifying but instructive event. “At the time, public health agencies considered heat waves a minor nuisance,” says the sociologist and writer Eric Klinenberg, whose 2002 book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago chronicled a horrifying cascade of policy errors and social conditions during a three-day period of unrelenting heat and humidity in mid-July.

When the mercury started to climb, Klinenberg says, “the mayor was in his beach house.” So were several other key city officials. “No one felt compelled to come back and manage the crisis.”