It’s been a hot week, and the summer is just getting started. It’s a type of heat that can be dangerous – especially in certain communities.
Our NBC4 I-Team data editor crunched numbers from the most recent U.S. Census to determine the places where the most heat-vulnerable people live in Southern California, based on risk factors including income, disabilities, age, and access to transportation.
The results are sweltering and sobering.
In the Los Angeles area alone, more than 11 million people are vulnerable to extreme heat – that's 77% of the population in that area, according to data from the U.S. Census.
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I think about the sensitive populations who lack the resources or capacity to adapt when it gets really hot.
Kelly Turner, professor of urban planning and geography at UCLA and an associate director at the Luskin Center for Innovation
And the area with the most people impacted by heat in our region?
It is a section of Garden Grove, where 9,492 people are considered vulnerable to high temperatures, with multiple risk factors.
Kelly Turner, a professor of urban planning and geography at UCLA and an associate director at the Luskin Center for Innovation, which focuses on environmental policy and planning research, says heat-vulnerable populations include children and seniors.
“I think about the sensitive populations who lack the resources or capacity to adapt when it gets really hot. But I also think about people who are spending a lot of their time in settings where they're exposed to too much heat. So that could be something like taking public transportation and being at a bus stop with no shelter,” she said.
“There's heat illness directly, but heat is a comorbidity with a lot of things, and it also exacerbates health issues. We know that women are more likely to have preterm births. We know that children's learning outcomes are degraded. We know that elderly are more likely to fall down,” Turner added.
Our NBC4 weather team continues following this current and potentially recording-breaking heat wave and says -- over time -- overnight temperatures have gotten warmer. So, you have less cooler air at night.
The heat is already leading to new calls for change.
Last month, Los Angeles City Council members voted to study the costs and feasibility of installing air conditioners in all rental units citywide. The motion comes a year after California was hit by a 10-day heat wave that broke temperature records across the state.
“I think that heat is just one of those things that makes all of the existing risks much worse,” Turner said.
The state developed an Extreme Heat Action Plan last year that includes many important goals. Turner says her group is looking into making change more rapidly.
"We tackle not only the things that seem obvious, like perhaps we need to plant more trees. And that's a land use issue. But looking sector by sector at the ways that policies may be making it difficult to implement actions,” she said.
