The heatwave of early summer brought back to this American writer his memories of happy childhood in Phoenix, in the middle of the Arizona desert. While leaving him with a bitter taste, against a backdrop of climate change: now living in Portland, he never thought he would have to explain to his daughter the tips and tricks for living with the extreme heat.
In 2000, I left Phoenix, Arizona, to live in Portland, Oregon, in part to escape the heat. At the end of June, she caught up with me.
The upper floor of our house and the walls radiated heat, and our rooms turned into stoves. The simple act of fetching a piece of clothing from an upstairs closet was a hardship. Our house has hardly undergone any renovations since its construction in 1955: not content with keeping period pink toilets, it is distinguished by its lack of air conditioning and an uninsulated attic. I slept (choppy sleep) on the ground floor, in the living room, in front of a portable air conditioner, while my wife tried to do the same upstairs. We had installed a second auxiliary air conditioner in our 3-year-old daughter’s bedroom, also located upstairs, directing the air towards her bed.
In Portland, almost nothing and no one was prepared for this heatwave. But now a persistent high pressure has created the famous “heat dome” over the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, the mercury flew away, and blackouts followed one another. Saturday night [le 26 juin]Portland hit 42.2 ° C and broke its previous heat record, 41.6 ° C, which dated back to 1965. Sunday [27], the mercury climbed to 44.4 ° C, a new record was set – before shattering again the next day, Monday [28], with 46.7 ° C [des pics à 51 °C ont été enregistrés de façon non officielle dans des quartiers déshérités de la ville].
Trucks from Portland General Electric, the local electricity company, plied the city streets to monitor network cables. The city’s parks and recreation department deemed the temperatures too high to open public swimming pools. Portland’s light rail has suspended service due to melted power cables. My neighborhood grocery store has collapsed with ice cubes.
“In Portland, it’s hot one week in the year”, we were still joking when I arrived in the region. While in Phoenix air conditioning is everywhere, I know few people in Portland who have air conditioning in their homes. On the hottest nights, as long as we were in our underwear and equipped with a simple fan, we slept. Besides, these hot nights were rare, and never scorching. For my part, I had grown up in Arizona, I was used to very hot weather. My father even taught me some desert survival skills. I never thought I would need it here.
Skateboarding at 50 ° C
But now, climate change is such that today I find myself having to pass this knowledge on to my daughter. She must learn to be able to go about her occupations (playing, enjoying the outdoors) in a situation of reasonable discomfort, to improvise when the heat becomes overwhelming, and to never underestimate the dangers of these summers.
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Aaron Gilbreath
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