Legislation may limit high temperatures in CA homes

By Pedro Zakaria, special for Calmatters

This comment was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

A comment on the guests written by

Extreme Heat is an emergency of public health for millions of Californians. For my family, this is not just an outdoor threat; This is also in our home.

I live in a mobile home in thermal in Eastern Valley Coachela. Here the triple digit heat penetrates our forecast earlier and earlier every year. This year, the 100-degree days began in April and will probably not end by October.

Many times this summer, we have tried to use swamp coolers. But when the humidity penetrates our homes, it is a suffocating feeling, especially when you lack insulation. You can’t escape it.

I know it’s dangerous to work seven or eight hours a day under the sun and then continue to wear oppressive temperatures at home, but what choice I have?

State leaders can do something about this and pass Senate Bill 655 For my family and millions of Californians, this bill would help protect. The measure establishes a state policy that would require housing units to maintain a safe maximum indoor temperature. If a law became, it would affect future state provisions, programs and solutions for grant.

California already has home laws to maintain a minimum indoor temperature. Why not have a law to guarantee a maximum indoor temperature?

Climate change will make extreme heat longer and more severe. In the next few decades, Riverside County will see 55 days each year at which temperatures exceed 100 degrees. By 2050, the deaths of extreme heat can jump to more than 10,000 per year in California.

SB 655 can save lives. Almost half People in the United States, who have died of heat over the last 20 years, have died indoors. Many did not have reliable cooling in their homes. Here in California caused exceptional heat 3 900 deaths Between 2010 and 2019, there were 1627 visits to the Emergency Department last year last year in Riverside County and 65 deaths Due to heat.

Where I live, people use oscillating fans in addition to coolers. We put small ice bags behind the fans so that they blow out cool air. But it doesn’t cool, it just circulates moist air inside our home. It is not adequate, especially for young children. And this is dangerous – you are at risk of electric shock, interruptions or burned fuse as the ice melts.

The interruptions of power supply in the summer are also becoming more common due to disgusting energy infrastructure. In mid -August we went Four days without electricityS The food is spoiled, the smaller power lines blocked the streets and we were left without air conditioning, coolers or fans.

How many families should survive this before our state leaders take meaningful action?

We need selected employees and agencies to work together to strive for a reality in which all Californians can be safe in their own homes of extreme heat and related diseases and death. The SB 655 will push the state towards the future in which we all have the right to cool indoors.

Families and communities like mine cannot afford to wait.

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.