It was the heat and the humidity–and by the time he was halfway through a double shift making well-being checks across Chicago on Sunday, Sohail Shekha was feeling it.
“Today is the first day in my American life that I felt too hot. I’m from Pakistan, and it’s hotter than Pakistan today,” said Shekha, 40, a Chicago Department of Human Services employee who spent most of his day on the South Side visiting senior citizens.
On a day when the official high temperature at O’Hare International Airport nudged 102 degrees and the heat index said it felt like 109–and when Midway Airport hit 104 degrees, the hottest temperatures since the deadly heat wave of 1995–most people across the city and suburbs just weathered the weather.
However, three Chicago residents died, apparently of heat-related causes, Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department, said late Sunday. Langford did not know their ages or under what circumstances firefighters were called to their homes.
The three deaths were reported in the 4300 block of North Hazel Street, the 200 block of East 121st Street and the 9700 block of South Yates Avenue, Langford said.
A spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office said late Sunday that he was unaware of any heat-related deaths.
Coping with the heat took many forms. Chicago area residents stayed put in air-conditioned homes or went to the pool, to near-freezing malls and theaters, to the Lollapalooza festival at sweltering Grant Park or to see the White Sox win at U.S. Cellular Field.
Some even did like the Rock Falls Little League All-Stars, who were playing a game in west suburban Maywood, and wrapped cold, wet towels around their necks.
“We’re coping pretty good,” said Barb Eikenberry, 33, as she sat in the shade watching her son, Taylor, play center field. “We’ve got wet towels, Gatorade and water.”
And as officials at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park were handing out 3,000 complimentary bottles of water before and during a concert by James Conlon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Commonwealth Edison Co. announced that it had set a record for electrical usage on a Sunday, with 20,800 megawatts consumed, said spokesman Luis Diaz.
The previous record of 19,228 megawatts was set in July 2002, he said. The utility reported only a few isolated power failures across northern Illinois.
Earlier Sunday, ComEd handed out 3,000 bottles of water to visitors at three Chicago parks.
A decade after killer temperatures claimed the lives of more than 700 Chicago residents, city officials credited better organization and an aggressive public awareness campaign before Sunday’s near-record heat for a relatively uneventful, if busy, day for emergency response workers.
198 calls to city
Authorities at Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications had received 198 calls–or almost four times the normal summer average–by 5 p.m. Sunday seeking well-being checks or rides to cooling centers, said department spokeswoman Monique Bond.
Many of the calls came after officials of the Chicago Department on Aging used an automated call system to contact 40,000 senior citizens on a city call list, Commissioner Joyce Gallagher said during a morning news conference in the city’s only 24-hour cooling center, at 10 S. Kedzie Ave.
More than 140 people visited one of seven cooling centers operated by Human Services, and department officials had scheduled 48 well-being checks by 4 p.m. Sunday, said spokeswoman Lisa Elkuss.
Suburban police and fire officials reported no fatalities and few heat-related calls on a day when the mercury fell three degrees short of Chicago’s hottest official high of 105, set in 1934.
“I don’t see [as] many cars out on the road as a normal Sunday,” said Aurora Fire Battalion Chief Brad Westrom. “I think everybody’s staying in and keeping quiet today.”
Well, not everybody.
Approximately 33,000 people who took in the second and final day of the Lollapalooza festival in Grant Park spent Sunday crowding into shaded areas and visiting tents with large fans and six air-conditioned Chicago Transit Authority buses set up as heat relief.
Although the heat didn’t dampen the show’s rock vibe, it did appear to cut into beer sales.
“Yesterday, it was 75 percent booze to water,” said Gregg Jackson, 28, who worked one of the festival’s beverage tents over the weekend. “Today it’s opposite that.”
Fifty to 60 people were treated for heat-related illnesses at the festival, according to security director Troy Officer. Three of them were taken to hospitals, Officer said.
City officials spent most of the day warding off heat-related emergencies with well-being visits to homes across the city, including one that saw Shekha install an elderly woman’s window air-conditioner.
“She had two fans. I saw the air was not cooling her, and I just installed it,” he said.
Elsewhere, workers like Sherry PonceDeLeon, a Department on Aging nurse, and Charlene Valentine, a project coordinator with the department, followed up on calls from neighbors, relatives and friends seeking well-being checks for senior citizens.
Just after midday, they paid a visit to Victor Peltola, 91, after he did not answer the phone when city workers tried to call him earlier in the day. Walking up the stairs to Peltola’s second-floor apartment, PonceDeLeon, who carries a special thermometer, said the heat index in the stairwell was 91 degrees.
`Tough old bird’
Peltola, who has trouble hearing, answered the door wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and khaki pants. Most of the blinds and curtains in his apartment were closed, and the lights were off.
An indoor thermometer read 85 degrees.
PonceDeLeon checked Peltola’s blood pressure and pulse, which were normal, and his temperature, which was slightly elevated, and suggested he keep cool by taking a cold shower or bath and heading out to an air-conditioned place. She also gave him a bottle of cold water.
Peltola insisted he felt fine and reminded his visitors that “we’ve had hot weather before.”
“Don’t forget, back in the 1800s they didn’t have any air conditioning or anything like that and people survived,” he said, smiling. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a tough old bird.”
PonceDeLeon, who has worked for the Department on Aging for 11 years, later said that too often the “tough old bird” mentality keeps people who really do need help from seeking it. So public health officials often rely on tips from the public to identify the people who are most in need.
Sunday’s heat didn’t stop the Mayor’s Cup Youth Soccer Tournament at Montrose Beach, but officials did change the format to make sure games were finished earlier in the day.
“We had a nice breeze there, so it was tolerable, but the ground was so dry they kicked up a lot of dust,” said Cindy Gatziolis, spokeswoman for the Mayor’s Office of Special Events. “Kids don’t care; they want to play.”
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