Andis: “Sacramento County has a severe weather plan in place whereby we constantly monitor the weather. And there are certain sustained high-degree days, along with very hot nights that do not cool off, that would trigger some care and response activities.”
During this heat wave, the night-time temperatures are cool enough to provide some relief. They dropped into the mid-60s Monday night in the valley. Andis says they’d have to stay in the mid-70s, along with daytime highs of 98 degrees or higher, to trigger the lowest alert level.
Andis also says the county’s budget woes won’t prevent officials from opening cooling centers if it’s hot enough.
Single-Room Occupancy Hotels Inspected
Ever since the big heat wave four years ago, Sacramento officials have made a point of checking conditions at single-room-occupancy hotels (SRO’s). At least three people died that summer in SROs that lacked air conditioning.
Ron O’Connor with the city’s code enforcement department says his staff just inspected those hotels the other day.
O’Connor: “The ones that need cooling still that don’t have AC in them are the Golden, the Congress and the Marshall. And someone was there in the heat of the day, and there was one person at the cooling room in the Golden and no one in the other two. But they were functioning.”
O’Connor says the city used to inspect the SRO’s once a year but now checks them every month during the summer.
What's Next?
After Tuesday, we should get some relief, with temperatures dropping to the upper-80s for several days starting Wednesday.
What's Next?
After Tuesday, we should get some relief, with temperatures dropping to the upper-80s for several days starting Wednesday.
Meantime, air quality officials say Tuesday will be the second straight day with unhealthy ozone levels for sensitive groups, like children, the elderly, the pregnant and the sick.
