Her family found her dead during a brutal heat wave. Her home lacked a lifesaving necessity.

[Demovictory9]

Her family found her dead during a brutal heat wave. Her home lacked a lifesaving necessity.

The sun came blazing through the sliding glass door in Jollene Brown’s cramped studio apartment, a converted storage unit in southeast Portland, Oregon. As the heat started rising in late June — hotter than she could ever remember — her son, Shane Brown, hung a blanket over the glass to help block the rays, to little effect.

The $750-a-month apartment didn’t come with air conditioning, and the old floor unit that she and her son had scraped the money together to buy wasn’t working. When her son suggested getting a new one, she waved the idea away. “We’ll see,” she told him over the phone on June 27, the last time that they spoke.

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“Please, God, let her be OK,” he thought as he drove to her home, worried that she was sick, as she suffered from cirrhosis and chronic leg swelling and needed supplemental oxygen around the clock. When he opened the door, he saw her slumped on the recliner in her pajamas, her head tilted to one side. He pulled the oxygen unit off her face and put his hand to her cheek, which felt strangely firm.

Hours later, when the medical examiner arrived, it was 100 degrees inside the apartment.

Jollene Brown, 67, was one of hundreds of people who died from this summer’s deadly heat waves in the Pacific Northwest. In Oregon, most of the 96 confirmed victims “lived alone in homes with no working air conditioning or fans,” according to a state report. (Stark Firs Management, which operates Jollene Brown’s building, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/her-family-found-her-dead-during-a-brutal-heat-wave-her-home-lacked-a-lifesaving-necessity/ar-AANx01B?ocid=msedgntp

[North Shore Chicago]

1. This poor woman!

As many jerks as there are in this world, there would have been some who would have given her an A/C unit, if they only knew.......