Mexican farm worker Avelino Vazquez Navarro didn't have air conditioning in the motor home where he died last month in Washington state as temperatures surged into the triple digits. For the last dozen years, the 61-year-old spent much of the year working near Pasco, Washington, sending money to his wife and daughters in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, and traveling back every Christmas. Now, the family is raising money to bring his remains home. "If this motor home would have had AC and it was running, then it most likely would have helped," said Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGary, who determined Vazquez Navarro's death was heat-related, with alcohol intoxication as a contributing cause.
Most heat-related deaths involve homeless people living outdoors. But those who die inside without sufficient cooling also are vulnerable, typically older than 60, living alone and with limited income, the AP reports. Underscoring the inequities around energy and access to air conditioning as summers grow hotter, many victims are Black, Indigenous or Latino, like Vazquez Navarro. "Air conditioning is not a luxury, it's a necessity," said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association, which represents state energy assistance programs. "It's a public health issue and it's an affordability issue."
People living in mobile homes or in aging trailers and RVs are especially likely to lack proper cooling. Nearly a quarter of the indoor heat deaths in Arizona's Maricopa County last year were in those kinds of dwellings, which are transformed into a broiling tin can by the blazing desert sun. Worse, some mobile home parks bar residents from making modifications that could cool their homes, citing esthetic concerns. A new Arizona law required parks for the first time this summer to let residents install cooling methods such as window units, shade awnings, and shutters. (More on why "losing your air conditioning is now a life-threatening event" at the AP.)
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