Deadly extreme heat is on the rise in national parks — a growing risk for America's great outdoors
4:06 AM EDT July 23, 2023
Extreme heat appears to be killing people in America's national parks at an alarming pace this year, highlighting both its severity and the changing calculus of personal risk in the country's natural places as climate change fuels more weather extremes.
More people are suspected to have died since June 1 from heat-related causes in national parks than an average entire year, according to park service press releases and preliminary National Park Service data provided to CNN. No other year had five heat-related deaths by July 23, park mortality data that dates to 2007 shows, and the deadliest month for heat in parks -- August -- is yet to come.
The deaths reported so far are still under investigation, but all five died in temperatures that hit 100 degrees, a searing microcosm of a much more widespread pattern of extreme heat that has broken more than 3,000 high temperature records across the US since early June.
That kind of heat has proven an indiscriminate killer in the nation's parks:
A 14-year-old boy died on a trail in southwest Texas' Big Bend National Park in 119-degree heat, his 31-year-old father died seeking help to save him.
A 65 year-or-older man died hiking on June 1 in Big Bend.
A 57-year-old woman died hiking a trail in Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park.
A 71-year-old man collapsed and died outside a restroom in California's Death Valley National Park after park rangers believe he hiked a nearby trail.
A 65-year-old man was found dead in his disabled vehicle on the side of the road in Death Valley National Park, with park rangers suspecting he succumbed to heat illness while driving and then baked in temperatures as high as 126 degrees.
Heat is the deadliest type of weather, killing on average more than twice as many people each year as hurricanes and tornadoes combined. But heat deaths are notoriously difficult to track in the US, with one 2020 study estimating that they were undercounted in some of the most populous counties.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/23/us/national-park-heat-deaths-climate/index.html
