Metro Phoenix heat already kills as many people as car crashes

Opinion: An emergency-room doctor has a front-row seat to Maricopa County's growing heat epidemic. And thoughts on how to make it less deadly.

Arizona Republic

Morning. In today’s opinions newsletter: Handling the heat, tax incentives for hockey and gun violence in schools.

I’m not ready for the heat.

I know. I say that every year when the first 100-degree day rolls around. It always takes a week or two to acclimate, and this year we’ve had such a cool spring that even the first 90-degree day felt dreadful.

Thankfully, because I have reliable air-conditioning, this first spike of heat won’t kill me.

But for others, it will.

An emergency-room physician writes about metro Phoenix’s increasingly deadly heat problem, noting that “the same number of people are dying of heat in three months as die of motor vehicle crashes in a year.”

(Take a second for that statistic to sink in. Heat now kills as many, if not more, people as car crashes.)

More importantly, he weighs in on what we should do about it. It’s well worth a read, given the weather.