This is why Segura plans to focus on “historically neglected communities that also suffer from immense pollution. These areas are often home to people of color - a recent study published in Nature showed that Black and Hispanic residents are twice as likely to be exposed to urban heat islands.
#THE NEXT MIAMI WINDOWS#
While the wealthy can afford swimming pools and insulated windows for their villas in tree-lined Beverly Hills, temperatures in the poorer areas of the city are higher by an average of 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit.
#THE NEXT MIAMI ZIP#
How hard this heat hits you depends largely on your zip code. “Extreme heat is our primary climate hazard,” Segura says. According to UCLA’s Heat Risk Map, Los Angeles experiences more weather-related emergencies than any other city in California, even more than Arizona. In California alone, heat has caused some 3,900 deaths over the past decade, which is why, when FEMA recently declared Los Angeles County the area most at risk for natural disasters in the country, it did so not only because of wildfire and earthquake threats, but also because of heat waves - and the city’s low resilience to them. Wildfires and hurricanes may grab the big headlines, but heat is actually the deadliest weather phenomenon in the US. The cities of Santiago, Athens, Freetown in Sierra Leone, and Phoenix have all created similar positions. She follows in the footsteps of long-term city planner Jane Gilbert, who became Miami-Dade County’s - and the world’s first - heat officer last year. In June 2022, she was appointed Chief Heat Officer for Los Angeles, the first Latina in the US to hold such a job. Segura now has a chance to do something about this. And yet, drive through California’s agricultural areas on a hot summer day, and you’ll see hundreds of workers plucking strawberries and tomatoes in the midday blazing sun. Researchers estimate that heat is responsible for 12,000 premature deaths annually in the US, a toll that could rise to 97,000 by 2100. About a quarter could warm by more than 7☌ by 2100, a magnitude of change that would alter life in dramatic ways.
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About a fifth of the most populated cities in the world could warm by more than 4☌ by 2050. The temperatures that plagued Segura’s parents decades ago have only gotten worse. “My dad once almost died in the fields as a result.” Segura remembers that her mother organized other workers, particularly women who “could not even go to the restroom without authorization from the foreman,” which limited their water intake. “Both were exposed to extreme heat in their workplace, and I saw them suffer as a consequence,” she says. She grew up in Northern California, where her mother worked in the steamy canneries of San José, and her father in the fields. Marta Segura has seen firsthand how heat can harm a person.