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Heat Wave 1
Wed Jul 07, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton, and this is The Weather Notebook. Chicago 1995. Paris 2003. In
both cities, many hundreds of people died in brutal heat waves. But these sister cities
have something else in common, as correspondent Bob Henson discovered.
BH: Eric Klinenberg, sociologist at New York University and author of "Heat Wave," a
study of the Chicago disaster, says that officials in Chicago, much like officials in Paris,
tried to deny the horror of their heat wave until it was too late.
EK: One of the themes of heat waves in my book about the Chicago disaster is that the
city government in Chicago did everything it could to put this story out of sight, to make
sure that it didn't become a public event or a scandal, the kind of thing that could
stigmatize or embarrass city officials.
EK: Unfortunately, a consequence of that is that we did not learn the lessons of 1995
that we might have and, perhaps those lessons would have saved lives this time
around.
BH: In time, Chicago did learn from the tragedy; the city now has a stronger warning
system in place. And Paris is responding, too.
EK: In Chicago in 1995, the heat wave was treated as a natural disaster, an act of God.
One city official said, 'You know, we're talking about people who died because they
neglected to take care of themselves.' So it's often interpreted as individual failure. But
immediately in Europe, the heat wave disaster was framed as a political event. And
there've been a number of studies and now the beginning of an official public inquiry in
France and a real attempt to understand why we've become so vulnerable to heat
waves today.
More on heat waves tomorrow. The Weather Notebook is generously funded by
Subaru
of America, and the National Science Foundation. We are produced by the Mount
Washington Observatory, where the all-time high temperature is 72 degrees.
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