Portland’s first “Heat Week” began during the last week of June to commemorate the 69 lives lost last summer due to high temperatures in Portland’s heat dome event. The event arrived during another, albeit less severe, heat wave as temperatures reached the high-90s when the event kicked off on Sunday, June 26.
The 2021 heat dome was a series of triple-digit temperature days three days in a row, hitting an all-time high of 116 degrees on June 28, 2021, according to the National Weather Service. The high temperatures were partly caused by a ridge of high pressure moving over the Pacific Northwest. Such high temperatures are abnormal in the Pacific Northwest, where it is uncommon for summer days to reach triple digits.
In addition to the high temperatures, the heat dome revealed inequities, with a 25-degree difference between the hottest and coolest places in Portland during that time, according to information provided by Vivek Shandas, organizer of Heat Week.
Shandas is a professor at the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University but is involved with Heat Week as an individual rather than in his capacity as a professor.
“Part of what we're trying to do is get agencies, like public agencies, shored up with their resources to be able to develop the kind of systematic communication and engagement and preparedness actions to reduce the fatalities from heat events in the future,” Shandas said.
Heat Week, consisting of several panels and action-based events throughout the week, was initiated by CAPA Strategies, a climate adaptation and planning analytics company based in Portland. According to the Heat Week website, CAPA brought together multiple city agencies and leaders to plan and oversee Heat Week to “focus on the experience of and adaptation to heat in the Portland area.”
Along with CAPA, the event is co-sponsored by multiple agencies, including the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management, Multnomah County Health Department, Washington County Health Department, Families for Climate and other nonprofits. Heat Week will offer in-person and virtual events.
The events started with commemorating those who passed away during the 2021 heat dome on June 26, at the Leach Botanical Garden. On day two, attendees participated in a climate and mental health panel from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The virtual event included discussions on mental health and healing, justice and climate.
Day three, on June 28, featured a Pedalpalooza Bike Ride hosted by 350PDX and an Action Night Picnic. The ride began at 5 p.m. at Lents Park and ended at Colonel Summers Park.
Day four features Heat First Aid Training, an online webinar providing education about the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Day five on June 30 is a virtual event featuring a committee closing discussion and reflections from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Shandas, a Portland resident, organized the June 26 event.
The event included reading the names of individuals who died during the heat dome and hosting a conversation about what preparedness planning looks like for hotter summers for different groups around the region.
"The most fundamental failure is a failure of imagination because nobody in Oregon really believed that people would die of heat in Oregon"
While Shandas said the city of Portland knew 10 days in advance temperatures would be hotter than ever in 2021, the city’s inability to reduce deaths resulted from a lack of communication, planning and preparedness.
“The fact that we weren't able to reach the property owners of multifamily residential units and kind of give them the resources to check with their residents about their level of preparedness, their understanding of cooling options,” Shandas said when listing specific breakdowns in preparation efforts. “The fact that we didn't go out to trailer home parks and check with the property managers there, even the residents there. The fact that we didn't really have a system in place for outreach engagement — particularly for the most isolated of our community — really suggests that we need to have done a lot more work ahead of time.”
Jonna Papaefthimiou, chief resilience officer for the city of Portland, organized two panels featured throughout Heat Week: one on climate and mental health and another on heat health training. Papaefthimiou’s real work on heat preparedness in Portland, however, came during the 2021 heat dome, and she said she wants to make some changes in the future.
“The most fundamental failure is a failure of imagination because nobody in Oregon really believed that people would die of heat in Oregon,” Papaefthimiou said.
One of the mistakes Papaefthimiou said she believes the city made during the heat dome was not focusing enough on outreach to Portlanders living in homes.
“Our direct outreach was on street outreach to people that were living outside,” Papaefthimiou said, making sure they had water, hydration salts and getting people into shelters and cooling centers. “And we didn’t do a ton of messaging to people who lived inside. They live in a house. It’s hot, but (the city thought) they’re not going to die of heat in their own homes. But that’s exactly what happened.”
A report from Multnomah County indicates people who died in the heat dome mostly lived alone in multifamily buildings, in warmer parts of Multnomah County, or people who were experiencing homelessness or living in unstable housing. The same report notes that fewer than 10% of those who died had air conditioning.
Most residences in Portland are not built with air conditioning, and that’s where cooling centers organized by counties come in — but even cooling centers are not a perfect solution for reducing deaths. Another area of improvement, Papaefthimiou noted, would be improved outreach to those most vulnerable to extreme heat.
“Our message has to really include, ‘Take care of yourself, check on others, and also check on them persistently,’ because there were even people that were checked on during the heat wave at some point, said they were fine, and that person passed away later the next day,” Papaefthimiou said.
In the middle of Heat Week, an event took place focusing on a broader discrepancy impacting heat in Portland — tree canopy coverage. Experts like Shandas have found tree canopy coverage plays a significant role in how hot or cool a city is during a heat wave.
The Tuesday bike ride and gathering, organized by Brenna Bell, forest climate manager for 350PDX, took a route meant to showcase the shade discrepancies throughout the city — discrepancies that exacerbated the 2021 heat dome.
“The main point is to have a lived experience of going from one of the hottest parts of Portland to one of the coolest parts of Portland,” Bell said.
The route began at Lents Park and ended at Colonel Summers Park — going from a less shaded area to a much more shaded area.
“We'll just feel how much trees affect your ability to withstand heat,” Bell said before the event. “So the idea of the bike ride is to take that out of the abstract and put it into the lived experience.”
To participate in the bike ride, one needed only to show up with a bike and safety gear, Bell said.
“I would say in all of this, there’s a justice element,” Bell said. “The people who are hit hardest by climate disasters are the people who are already hit hardest by all the injustice in our world. So as we think about how to address climate change and resiliency, there’s the dual part of thinking about the climate bit and thinking about the justice bit.
“It’s really important to ensure that the ones who are hit most and worst are the first ones to get help.”
Editor's note: The digital version of this story, originally published June 26, has been updated to match the print version published June 29.
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