Heat Wave Death Toll Reaches 95 in Oregon

Record temperatures seem to have caused hundreds of deaths in the Pacific Northwest
By Liz MacGahan,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 4, 2021 4:15 PM CDT
Heat Wave Death Toll Reaches 95 in Oregon
A person uses an umbrella for shade from the sun while walking near Pike Place Market, Tuesday in Seattle.   (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

We don’t know how many people died in the recent heatwave in the Pacific Northwest, but it looks like a lot. The best guess is in the hundreds. Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown, said Sunday that 95 deaths there were related to the heat, the AP reports. Portland saw a record-setting 116 degrees between June 25 and July 1. Despite offering heat warnings, setting up cooling stations, and distributing water to people who needed it, “We still lost too many lives,” Brown said. North of Portland in Seattle, Harborview Medical Center treated an “unprecedented” number of people suffering from the heat, NPR reports.

Seattle was relatively brisk at 106 degrees; Washington State has reported about 20 heat-related deaths, but the number is expected to climb. British Columbia, in western Canada, reported that 486 people died in a span of time that averages about 165 deaths. The coroner in BC, Lisa Lapointe, said she couldn’t pin down how many were heat-related but said it was likely that most of the excess deaths were, per the AP. (More heat wave stories.)

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