This is the first year I can remember where temperatures can stay 20 to 40 degrees above normal for weeks at a time. I think this began with Phoenix recording the most days over 100 or 110 degrees last summer. But, this summer is a whole new ball game where people are starting to die in the heat without air conditioning. And it isn't just homeless people who are dying but people in their homes, on motorcycles in Death Valley and even in their cars in the western states now. This heat is DEATH on a whole new level.
People are having to cancel vacations because where they want to go is either too hot or too smoky from fires. For example, our friends from Texas that we stayed with in Boerne a month or so ago went to our Santa Barbara house and then got sick there. They sent us photos of the air from I think it is called "The Lake Fire in the mountains above Santa Barbara and the smoke completely blotted out the sun there. So, now they not only are dealing with being sick and can't go to Tahoe like they wanted they are also dealing with being sick while breathing smoke. The heat for them isn't the problem because Santa Barbara is okay right now except for the smoke. But, have you ever had a chest or head cold and having to breathe smoke too?
At my present age of 76 I find I cannot stay in Mt. Shasta when there is smoke anymore either. I just cannot breathe both at 3500 feet AND deal with smoke in the air at the same time any more. So, our friends are also above retirement age and so they are dealing with all of this too.
I saw a picture of a 66 year old woman who had been overcome by the heat being rescued too this morning in the news and she looked so out of it that I hoped she could actually recover from all this. not sure.
This is happening to people all over the west because this level of constant day and night heat hasn't really been seen before this year. In the past, you might recover from the daytime heat at night but the night temperatures often are above 80 to 90 degrees too so there is no recovery unless you have air conditioning where you are.
On top of this many people are already incapacitated in various ways and aren't thinking straight to begin with and these would be the most vulnerable now to heat related deaths and being found dead and alone in their homes and cars throughout the western states over time this summer.
The other problem we are dealing ongoing for several months now is that We have a Samsung Heat pump that failed us in Santa Barbara. That is the main reason we aren't spending more time down there because the heater AND the Air conditioning are not working. It's true we bought little floor heaters which will heat a couple of rooms but our friends are staying there basically without a heating system or an Air conditioning system working there. It's possible that the heating system went down from a power failure there in the Santa Barbara area which is common. But, the controls in a Samsung are NOT all 110 or 220 volt and so such surges of power or failures of power can damage such a system. On top of this Samsung isn't getting back to our heating guy as to whether the Samsung system failed or it was a power outage that killed our Samsung Heat pump. So, we don't know whether Samsung will honor the fact that the system failed or whether we have to pay for a whole new system and this one was only installed 2 years ago at most!
So, I guess we could overcome all this by just investing in a new system but now in Santa Barbara this kind of problem has become so serious that you are forced now to get a Surge protector for your whole Electrical system in any house now there too. So, it's become very complicated to deal with all this. This is the main reason why we aren't there right now. And on top of this our friends got sick there (likely partly because they don't have a heating system or air conditioning system working there at all. And now they are having to deal with smoke from the fires too on top of all of this.
So, on many levels it's a really crazy spring and summer in regard to the Santa Barbara house.
No comments:
Post a Comment