Phoenix continues to endure blistering-hot temperatures morning, noon and night, with no end in sight to the string of 110-degree days.
Although nonprofits and local governments offer some refuge from the heat, limited hours leave many residents exposed to deadly conditions.
Local leaders and elected officials shared their frustrations after touring several Maricopa County-area cooling centers Monday.
The Valley’s Heat Relief Network is managed by the Maricopa Association of Governments. Maricopa County and the city of Phoenix provide funding to many of the non-government partners and other organizations that provide heat relief services.
But no single government entity is in charge of heat relief.
The Rev. Katie Sexton-Wood with the Arizona Faith Network, which operates cooling stations and respite centers, said a lack of consistent funding to sustain these services is one of their biggest barriers.
“We are so grateful for the funding that came out of Maricopa County with our city partners this year,” Sexton-Wood said. “There is no sustainable funding for this work throughout the city on a public level or on a private level with nonprofits.”
Which Sexton-Wood said means running out of must-have resources.
“So that means we run out of funding, we run out of space, and we run out of people,” she said. “Predominantly for funding on the nonprofit side.”
After seeing some of the network’s cooling centers, Democratic state Rep. Judy Schwiebert said she wants lawmakers doing more.
“I don’t think that our state government is stepping up the way we need to step up in order to provide a sustainable structure for making sure that folks are taken care of,” Schwiebert said.
Schwiebert and fellow Democrat Patty Contreras both called for Congress to pass the Extreme Heat Emergency Act. That would add “extreme heat” to the federal list of what qualifies as a major disaster event.
“This would allow Governor Hobbs to declare this unprecedented heat a major disaster and provide funding to help mitigate this emergency,” Contreras said.
David Hondula is the director of Phoenix’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation. He noted the record number of 911 calls for heat-related emergencies this summer.
“We’ve seen many days that have set record highs in the historical record,” Hondula said.
Hondula also noted that opening heat relief services on weekends remains a challenge. But he said conversations are ongoing to do so, and to extend hours into the morning and night.
“Right now when we look at where the network has the most capacity, that’s in the 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. window,” he said. “In the city of Phoenix, that is when 80% of the 911 calls related to heat occur.”
So although the network isn’t addressing 100% of the need for relief, Hondula said it is addressing the majority.
Melissa Guardaro is the lead for the Cooling Center Working Group and an assistant research professor at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability. She said while services have grown, they still aren’t enough.
“It’s not only the unhoused that we need to be aware of,” Guardaro said, “but it’s also people who have shelter but are faced with difficult choices of whether to pay for air conditioning or pay for their rent or medical services, or their other costs along the way.”
Guardaro said the fact that overnight temperatures haven’t cooled down means that no real relief is in sight.
“Any gap that we have in our infrastructure becomes very apparent when people all of a sudden cannot get to their job because it’s just too hot to walk to their transit node or they’re working outdoors and they’re feeling ill from the day before,” Guardaro said.
Guardaro said that while the efforts made so far have been good ones, more needs to be done. If the Federal Emergency Management Agency recognizes extreme heat as a disaster, she said that would be a step in the right direction.
