LETTER: Stay cool

Jerry Sturdivant of Las Vegas submitted a letter to the editor on September 13, 2026, at 9:00 p.m., responding to a Sept. 1 article about heat‑related fatalities in the city and drawing a parallel to Chicago’s heat wave three decades earlier. Your Sept. 1 communicative astir Las Vegas residents dying successful their homes (“Many incapable to flight heat”) due to the fact that they lacked aerial conditioning reminded maine of Chicago’s deadly vigor question 31 years ago. Many of those who died were aged and surviving unsocial successful apartments, often without moving A/C and sometimes acrophobic to unfastened their windows due to the fact that of crime. Air conditioning is important, but it should not beryllium presented arsenic the lone defence against unsafe heat. When temperatures go extreme, particularly during a powerfulness failure, nationalist officials should repeatedly punctual radical of different ways to chill themselves: instrumentality chill showers, bedewed the tegument oregon clothing, usage damp towels and beryllium successful beforehand of a instrumentality erstwhile energy is available. Water cools the assemblage directly, and evaporation provides further cooling. In a adust clime specified arsenic Las Vegas, that tin beryllium particularly effective. These elemental measures outgo small and could prevention lives. They merit to beryllium portion of each nationalist informing astir utmost heat.