While heat rises in the desert, a group of community stands up to save lives

From Deborah BrennanCalmness

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

As this week the internal empire increased the warning of exceptional heat this week, a group of community helps residents in the hottest parts of the desert to manage the burning time.

The Non -Profit Committee Comité Civico Del Valle has distributed air purifiers, air -conditioning devices and water purifiers to families living around Salton Sea through a time resistance program that gofundme.org launches.

“This program is for justice, safety and dignity for our inhabitants,” said Luis Olmed, CEO of Comité Civico del Valle at a press conference last week. “It’s not just about giving away equipment. And it’s to ensure that vulnerable residents, especially the elderly, people with health conditions and low -income families are not abandoned when it hit extraordinary heat.”

Thehe National Meteorological Service It warns of extreme meteorological conditions in the internal desert regions this week, with temperatures forecast from 106 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Meteorological conditions, stated, will be “dangerously hot” and will be a “major thermal risk” of diseases, including heat spasms, exhaustion of heat and heat stroke.

But three -digit temperatures are the norm in the summer for the desert communities in the Eastern River and the Imperial District.

And aging homes are not equipped to protect against these conditions. Many families live in mobile homes, including old, aluminum trailers without insulation, which are “like being inside the can,” says Esther Bejrako, director of health programs for the organization.

“Imagine living inside this trailer, where it is 30, 40 years old, and you have a non -working interior unit of the window … to cool the house,” she said.

In 2022, the Imperial County had more than 100 visits related to the heat of 100,000 inhabitants: the highest percentage in the state. Last year County registered 196 medical incidents related to heatincluding 11 deaths. This year she has reported 65 diseases and has no death.

Neighboring Riverside County, which also includes parts of the sea in Salton, Recorded 1 627 Emergency Department visits and 65 deaths due to heat associated with heat in 2024. and 550 visits related to the emergency room and two deaths this year.

Gofundme.org Introduced a pilot program to reduce these risks. He provided half a million dollars to Comité Civico del Valle to provide devices to people who do not have air filtration or cooling systems or cannot afford to use them.

“I knew people who live in produced homes they called trailers. They had to go to the circle K if or in the public library to cool down because they had no air conditioning,” says Rodrigo Palma, a 72-year-old Brauli resident who received help through the program.

The goal was to provide 100 families updated cooling systems. So far, the program has installed 72 cooling systems, 389 air purifiers and four reverse osmosis filters, said Amanda Brown Lerman, CEO of Gofundme.orgS

“Although these interventions do not replace the need for systemic changes, they provide families with tools for protecting their health and managing daily challenges a little more true and a little more accessible,” Lerman said.

The weather resistance program hit some stanks, said refugees. Cooling systems, called mini-climate units, are systems without channels designed to cool quickly and effectively individual rooms, she said.

“They were very popular and sales have jumped because people cannot afford to turn on AC if they have one that cools the whole house,” she said.

But the contractors hired to install them found that they were allowed to cost $ 900 per unit, she said.

“We had a lot of obstacles with the very high permits for those homes and families that need the most,” she said. “This is something that we have to do some political work on.”

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