As the world burns
July 9, 2021
At 85 years old, Dorothy Galliano – whom the New York Times described as “a vibrant fixture” in her neighborhood, the Seward Park section of Seattle – didn’t have air-conditioning. In the Pacific Northwest’s largest city, cooled most of the time by sea breezes and its frequent clouds, only 44 percent of homes do, the lowest of any metro area in the United States. In a few short hours last Tuesday, that conventional wisdom turned deadly.
Seattle firefighters found Galliano inside her overheated home after neighbors hadn’t seen her for a while. A window was open just a crack, and her TV set was on. She was one of at least 125 Americans, with the number still rising, whose deaths were attributed to a heat dome that settled over the Pacific Northwest and sent temperatures to levels once thought unimaginable, including a record 108 degrees in Seattle last Monday. In addition, authorities say hundreds more have died just across the border in Canada, where the scenic mountain town of Lytton burned to the ground.