Heat tends to kill more people than any other weather event including Hurricanes. Why?

 Because the first thing that too much heat does is to take away your ability to make good decisions. So, unless someone else is there when you lose the ability to make good decisions you are often dead soon. Because once you lose your ability to make good decisions you are often not longer for this world when you are too hot and faint or start to go into heat related seizures.

For example, the place called Death Valley got it's name honestly because people who traveled through there on horseback or covered wagon in the old days often died there if they made the mistake of going through there on their way to California in the wrong time of year or when it was too hot (which can likely at times be in any month of the year). Also, it is likely there was no potable water most places in Death Valley then too. So, even if you were traveling through there you likely were not going to find potable water that was safe to drink. From about Death Valley all the way over to Texas often if there is water it has alkali or other dangerous chemicals to humans in it. So, even if you found water to drink it might kill you if you actually tried to drink it even 100 or 200 years ago from Death Valley all the way to Texas many places.

My father told me of riding in an old Dodge touring car in the 1920s across Texas back to Califronia and Oregon and Washington and told me that the alkali dust on the dirt roads across the deserts between California and Texas were the worst because only their father had goggles so the alkali dust made the rest of the family's eyes burn from driving through this alkali dust for hundreds of miles across deserts especially then in the 1920s. At that time the paved roads were either in or around the bigger cities and suburbs and the superhighways or even paved highways didn't exist that much especially between large cities in the west. So, often it was much easier because of this to travel by Train even though it would have been more expensive to travel that way with your whole family than just packing everyone up in an old Dodge or Chevy or Ford and heading off across the desert together like my father's family did often across alkali dirt roads.

He told me that they tied their hound dogs for hunting to the running boards of the car so they wouldn't mess in the car because they were outdoor dogs specifically trained for hunting game to eat then. My father was born in 1916 and passed away in 1985 almost 40 years ago now.