NYT: California heat wave death toll is now up to 100.

[NNadir]

In California, Heat Is Blamed for 100 Deaths
E-MailPrint Single Page Reprints Save

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: July 28, 2006
FRESNO, Calif., July 27 — A searing heat wave nearly two weeks old is responsible for more than 100 deaths across California, the authorities said Thursday. So overwhelmed is the local coroner’s office here that it has been forced to double-stack bodies.

A farm worker near Bakersfield in the Central Valley of California. Some laborers are working only half-days, and crops are at risk.
Most of the deaths have occurred in the landlocked Central Valley, the state’s agricultural spine, where triple-digit temperatures have lately been the norm. The heat has been linked to at least 22 deaths here in Fresno County, whose funeral homes have offered to help with the coroner’s backlog.

“We’re just trying to catch up,” said Joseph Tiger, a deputy coroner in Fresno. “I have been here 10 years, and I have never seen it this bad. Our boss has been here over 20, and he hasn’t seen it this bad either. For the last two weeks it has just been unbearable hot.”

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said the heat wave had been confirmed as the cause of death among at least 53 people around the state. Pending autopsies, heat-related causes are presumed in the death of scores of others, said Roni Java, a spokeswoman for the emergency services office.

Many of these suspected heat deaths have been among the elderly, who often live as shut-ins and will not open windows, said Loralee Cervantes, the Fresno County coroner.

The toll of such casualties has no recent precedent in California. According to data provided by the California Department of Health Services, the greatest number of heat-related deaths in the state since 1989 had been 40, in 2000...

...The record temperatures have also hit farmers hard, with roughly 16,500 cows, 1 percent of the state’s dairy herd, dying of the heat, according to California Dairies, the state’s largest milk cooperative. Further, panting, miserable cows, which lack the benefit of sweat glands, have yielded 10 percent to 20 percent less milk than usual, said trade groups and dairy farmers in the region. California produces more milk than any other state in the country, providing about 12 percent of the American supply.

Six counties have declared states of emergency because of the large number of dead livestock, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture has waived a regulation requiring haulers of dead animals to transport them to rendering plants in eight counties in the Central Valley. The waiver frees the haulers to leave the carcasses in landfills....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/us/28heat.html?hp&ex=1154145600&en=51c9f3cd5a424f0c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Double stacking the morgues: Now standard practice in the age of Bush.

[Ezlivin]

1. France, then California - Why does God hate us for our grapes?

This does seem to be occurring across the same latitude.

[NNadir]

2. God, I think, has nothing to do with it.

The matter is one that involves purely chemistry, physics and human indifference.